A Matter of Tact
by Jojo6
Summary: Future-fic. S/J. Series. Finished!
1. Default Chapter

Title: A Matter of Tact

Author: Jojo

Email: randomleaves@yahoo.co.uk

Rating: PG-13 for swearing

Disclaimer: Not mine. Alas. Alack. 

Season: Future, complete with Season 7 spoilers.

Summary: Jack needs to work on his diplomacy skills. Another retirement fic. In my defense... I didn't actually start it with the intention that it would be... never mind.

A/N: Thanks to Melly and Emry

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*

*

"Hi."

She looked up from studying a scuff mark on her hall floorboards and took in his appearance with surprise. What the...? She looked around the kitchen dazedly, turned to look in the hallway, trying to remember if she'd noticed anything out of place when she'd opened her front door. "Er... hi," she said, stupidly, moving her helmet from one arm to the other.

He nodded at her, his eyes slightly more open than they usually were but otherwise perfectly normal, and then he wandered off into the living room, leaving Sam completely unsure of what to do. 

Distracting herself with the mundane, she dropped her bag and helmet onto the kitchen counter and automatically checked her phone for messages. _No. New. Messages._

She stared at the red zero on the little screen for a moment.

What the hell was she doing?

He was in her house. He. Was. In. Her. House. What's more – not only was he in her house – he wasn't supposed to be in her house. He was supposed to be in... in... well, she couldn't remember his speech last night since she'd been focusing on trying not to cry like a baby in front of her superiors and subordinates, but she was pretty sure there were some fishing jokes in it. And trees.

There were definitely some trees.

Did she mention he was in her house?

"How did you get in?" Sam called.

"Key!" he yelled back over the sound of the TV.

Her TV.

He was in her house and he was watching her TV. 

"What key?" 

"Daniel's key!"

Daniel's key opened her door? Well that was...

No, wait, she'd given a key to Daniel. Yeah. She actually remembered doing that. After his... de-glowing... Daniel had nowhere to stay and he'd bunked in her guest room for a couple of nights, then moved to the Colonel's, then to Janet's and finally back into an apartment of his own. She'd never asked for the key back because, well, it was Daniel. He'd probably lost it.

Apparently not.

She shucked her leather jacket off and draped it over one of her stools before wandering into the living room and standing in the doorway, watching him. He seemed to have been here for some time – there was a half full bag of chips on the coffee table, a couple of empty bottles of beer and he'd left his shoes against one wall. 

Plus, it looked like he'd been looking through her magazine stack.

"Sir, what – "

"No 'sirs'!" he said, still staring at the screen and dropping chips into his mouth, crunching noisily.

Sam blinked.

She guessed it would be too much to ask to find out that she was actually hallucinating. Janet had checked her out fully only three days ago and she hadn't eaten or drunk anything on their last mission together off-world that could possibly cause this kind of... bizarre... reaction.

"Um, any particular reason you decided to drop by? And... watch my TV?" she queried, trying to sound respectful. Sure, he wasn't her CO any more but seven and a half years of being his subordinate at work had left her with a pretty serious habit.

"You've got a bigger TV than me."

"I do not."

"Okay." He shrugged. "Mine broke."

"How?"

"I don't know. How *do* TV's break?"

He was making this up. She was absolutely positive. He was lying out of his ass. She would bet anything if she went over his to house right now his TV would be fine. Why the hell would he be lying to her? 

"I thought... I thought you were.." She cleared her throat the moment her voice started to thicken and a suspicious tingling began behind her eyes. Deciding she needed a distraction, she ran her finger over the edge of a couch cushion. "Weren't you going up north?"

"Mmm. You know, I haven't watched a show like this in years."

Sam's eyes dragged reluctantly away from him – because, well, he was probably the most interesting thing in her house – and she looked at the screen. "It's a talk show. A bad one."

"Are there good ones?"

"Um. Well." Actually, Sam decided it probably wasn't a good time to explain to him the drinking game she and Janet had for Jerry Springer. He may no longer be her CO but was still, you know, *nearly* her CO.

But, on a totally different topic, his shirt was nice today.

Not that she spent much time considering his clothes, of course, because he was normally in BDUs and while he looked hot in them (Seriously, men in uniform? Huge perk of the job), seeing him in them every day got to be a tad repetitive. 

Still, she had noticed that his civilian clothes sometimes tended to get a little outlandish. Like he dressed in the dark. All the time. And didn't have a mirror. Bright yellow sweaters and strange knit caps which, adorable in their terribleness, didn't do much for him as his dress uniform. The only thing he seemed to be able to buy properly were leather jackets – one which was currently tossed over the back of her other couch. 

Today he was wearing faded blue jeans (yum) and a nice, soft-looking grey shirt. His hair was tousled, his face relaxed and his socks had Bart Simpson on them.

Cute.

So. Totally. Cute.

He stretched, raising his arms in the air and straightened his legs, pointing his toes in the process. His shirt hiked up a couple of inches and Sam's eyes were so totally there.

So. Totally. Hot.

"I need to go get changed," she murmured faintly.

"Sure."

"Okay." She hovered momentarily, strangely feeling like she should be saying something. "You'll... be here when I get back?" 

He lifted the remote and changed channels. "Yup."

"Right."

She hovered again, then forced herself to walk to the door and out into the hallway towards her bedroom. Her ex-CO was in her house, watching her TV, eating her chips, stretching. 

Why did this kind of thing happen to her? Seriously – did she ask for this? Was she cursed? Why couldn't she have a normal relationship with a guy?

Was he completely nuts?

She changed into a pair of jeans and a pink sweater, then decided the sweater was too girlie and she switched it for a green one. Then she told herself that girlie was fine – particularly considering he'd been used to seeing her in green. So she switched back to the pink. After a few more indecisions, she decided she looked better in the green and switched back once more.

Sam stood in front of her bathroom mirror and touched up her makeup. It was weird. Only that morning she'd stood in front of the mirror and miserably tried to cover up the effect his retirement had on her complexion with layers of foundation and carefully applied makeup. Of course, that morning she'd thought he'd already left, with barely a word to her, as well.

Frowning at herself, she recalled that he'd not spoken to her once the previous night, unless you counted his assurances in his speech that she'd do just fine as leader of SG-1. Not that she'd heard the assurances – Daniel had told her about them later. And Daniel, being Daniel, had been drunk and pitiful so she hadn't taken his word for it.

All in all...

She was pretty pissed off actually.

*

Oh God. Oh God. Ohgodohgodohgod.

Fucking. Idiot.

Jack hurried across the room and grabbed his shoes, spun around once and decided he'd better leave them there. If she'd noticed them, it would look mighty weird when she came back in and saw he'd tidied them up. Shoes, after all, didn't walk by themselves.

Quickly dropping them back on the floor, he went to her magazine stack and hurriedly restacked them into some semblance of neatness. He had a feeling they'd actually been alphabetized (a realization that both freaked him out and completely enamored him) but there was no way in hell he'd have time to do that before she came back.

What had he been thinking?

Okay, it had been pretty obvious he hadn't been thinking. He'd just been in his house, packing for his trip to Minnesota, trying to decide which pair of boots to take and he'd realized...

He really wanted to see her.

He knew he'd avoided her the previous night; he wasn't sure he could take a conversation with Carter on the night of his retirement. The one with Daniel had nearly reduced him to unmanly displays of affection and added to that Jonas's heartfelt speech on how Jack had introduced him to the intricacies of Earth slang and Teal'c's speech on Tau'ri honor... well, hell. Jack had practically embarrassed himself. In public.

There was no way he'd get through a conversation with her without becoming overly... demonstrative.

Yeah. Demonstrative. That was a tactful way to put it.

Dragging her down onto the floor and removing every single piece of clothing on her body... not so tactful. More truthful, but not tactful.

It was very important to be tactful, all of a sudden.

So, like a coward, he'd avoided her. Said some bullshit about her being a great 2IC in his speech – a speech, by the way, that he'd not prepared in advance and that had made Doc Fraiser cry copiously. But then she'd not taken her own advice and had drunk several of the revolting looking green things that Jonas had made with the aid of that nurse, Lieutenant Rush, so the speech probably wasn't as moving as he'd thought. 

And now... he was in Carter's house. It was a nice house, you know. Comfortable. Pretty. Definitely a girl's house – it had girlie things in it like fancy cushions that 'picked up the tones of the room' and stuff like that.

And she did have a great TV and all the channels he really liked. Plus, she had a secret stash of Simpsons videos that she used to hide – badly - whenever he and the boys dropped by unannounced. 

Look, it had seemed like a good idea at that time. Drop by, say goodbye, and see where things went from there. Only he'd forgotten that Carter worked at the weekend. During holidays. Christmas. Downtime.... after his retirement party.

So he'd thought he'd wait for her. Perfectly innocent. Admittedly, he'd waited five and a half hours and had eaten half her supply of chips, drank a carton of apple juice and a couple of her expensive beers, but that wasn't the point. He'd had honorable intentions!

Intentions that had seriously gone out of the window when she'd returned home and he'd... sort of... panicked. 

She'd been wearing leather for God's sake!!!

He'd been completely struck dumb, as any sane man would have been when faced with Carter in that getup. All he'd managed was a greeting. At least, he hoped he'd greeted her. He couldn't quite remember. At the time all he'd been able to see were her leather-clad legs and sexy zip-up jacket and tousled hair and lips and eyes and hands and neck and.... Damn, and then she'd turned around....

Getting out of the kitchen had seemed like a really good idea. For his sanity. And, you know, as a matter of tact.

Because the whole 'dragging her down onto the floor and removing every single piece of clothing on her body' issue had kinda... risen again. No pun intended.

Oy.

He had a feeling he'd been rude. Okay, he knew he'd been rude. Considering he'd walked into her house and eaten her food, he really should have tried to be more polite. 

Instead, he'd ignored her. Because, you know, leather... dragging her down onto the floor... tact... rising... stuff like that. It had seemed the best thing to do would be to not look at her. Not even out of the corner of his eye like he usually did. He'd all but ignored her and hoped she wouldn't be too offended to kick him out until he'd at least calmed down and given her his reasons for being there.

She'd been in her room a really long time. Maybe he ought to go and look for her? Apologize.

Nononono. What if he saw her naked?

Man.

Naked Carter.

He grabbed a cushion and sat down on the couch again, placing the cushion just so as he shifted uncomfortably. Now he'd just sit here for a little while and think calming thoughts.

Fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish.

That so wasn't working. Bizarrely, he thought of fish. He thought of Carter. Somehow... Carter became a mermaid. And he was finding the whole lack of a bikini top thing really exciting.

He was a sick, sick person.

God, what was she doing in there?

Almost before he'd finished that thought she walked into the room. Damn. She'd changed out of the leather pants. Shame. Not that the jeans weren't nice, of course, but seriously, a guy could really do things with the leather. 

"What the hell are you doing here?"

He winced. Okay, sometime during getting changed Carter had discovered her temper. He should have known. 

Jack switched immediately into defense mode. "Okay, I'm sorry...."

"Damn right you are!"

"Major!" he protested automatically.

"You're not my CO!" she yelled back.

Oh yeah. 

He really wasn't.

He grinned, instinctively, reveling in the very idea. It was so weird to think of it – he was no longer her CO. She was no longer his 2IC. God. What a... what a relief.

And suddenly... she was grinning too.

And, still grinning, she dropped down onto the couch next to him and reached for the bag of chips, putting her bare feet up onto the coffee table and crossing her legs at the ankles. She was close enough for their upper arms to brush, but that was it. 

It was a start, Jack thought.

Munching on a chip, Carter frowned at the TV. "Hey, that woman just threw that guy across the room. Cool."

  



	2. Unused

Title: Un-used

Author: Jojo

Email: randomleaves@yahoo.co.uk

Rating: PG

Summary: Hah! Daniel... so Evil!

A/N: Sequel to 'A Matter of Tact', set around a week afterwards.

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*

"So, you're just going to hang around for a couple more weeks?"

"Yeah."

"Any... particular reason?" Daniel asked. In the background, he could hear murmuring and Jack wondered who was in the room with him. Couldn't be anyone he knew or Daniel would have said so. "No, no, just leave it there, I'll deal with it in a moment. Thanks."

Guessing that second part wasn't to do with him, Jack held the phone between his shoulder and jaw and opened the fridge, searching for something to drink. "Noooo," he said, slowly. "Just thought I'd... chill for a while. No reason to get up there right this second, Daniel. I do have the rest of my life to fish."

Freaky thought, though it was.

"Um... yeah. Do you want to meet up? I mean, I know you're coming down for Janet's Christmas thing – if only to protect me from Cassie's advances – but we could always get together before then."

Jack winced. The Christmas party. Damn. Cassie's sudden and inexplicable crush on Daniel had completely come out of left field and had terrified Daniel so much that he felt it necessary to have a chaperone with him at all times.

Jonas thought it was hysterical. In fact, Jonas liked to chaperone Daniel and then 'disappear', leaving Daniel *with* Cassie. Jonas was evil like that. 

Hmm. Milk?

Thoughtfully, Jack opened the milk and sniffed it. "How can you tell if milk's off?" he asked.

"It smells bad."

"Milk never actually smells *good*."

"Well... does it have a best before date on it?"

Jack checked the side. Then checked the other side. Checked the lid. The bottom. "No, it doesn't. I think it might have rubbed off."

"If it's rubbed off, chances are it's been in there too long anyway. Throw it out."

He grimaced. Some ideal from his upbringing was simply revolted by the idea of wasting good food or drink, but Daniel was probably right. He couldn't remember buying the milk and chances were it was long overdue. Even though things hadn't started growing in it yet. Shame. He liked looking at moldy things.

He took it over to the sink.

"So?"

"What?" Jack asked, watching the ghostly liquid drain away down the drain.

Daniel sighed. "Do you want... one moment, Jack. Hi. Yeah. Is that all of it?" There was a muffled noise in the background and Daniel's voice became more distant. Then it came closer again. ".... be kidding. I can't believe.... all right, it's not your fault. Just... go back to doing whatever it is that you do."

Jack grinned and turned the tap on to wash away the remnants of the milk. "A little harsh there, Daniel."

"He's an idiot. Seriously. I don't know where they're getting these kids."

"Kids?"

"Okay, so he's probably about thirty but, you know, that's young to me."

"You're thirty-six."

Daniel cleared his throat. "Those six years are really important. Anyway," he said, apparently really keen to change the subject, "do you want to meet up or what? You, me, Teal'c and Jonas? And Sam, too, if she's not busy."

"Sure," he said vaguely, pulling open the door to the garbage pail and dropping the milk carton inside. Damn. Looked like he needed to take out the trash.

"Doubt Sam'll be able to make it. You know, I think she's dating someone."

Jack froze automatically. A couple of years ago, those five words would have sent him into complete shock. Things were different now.. "Really? What makes you think that?"

"You know, your acting skills are getting worse."

Busted, he thought, cringing. What could he say? It was hard lying over the phone – he usually put all his effort into creating a good, blank face which was pointless when you were speaking to someone via what was essentially a bunch of little wires. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh come on, Jack," Daniel said, almost laughing. "You can't tell me it's not you she's been seeing out of work."

"It's not!"

"Then you're lying."

"She's not 'seeing' me. We're not dating or anything."

"So you are... meeting up outside of work in less than formal occasions."

What the...? Had he always been this irritating? "We just hang out, Daniel. We're friends."

"Like you and me."

No way! "Yeah."

"O-kaay. So when are you seeing her next? I mean, when are you meeting up next in your completely friendly circumstances?"

Jack narrowed his eyes and pulled the trash bag out. He was beginning to get a crick in his neck from holding the phone so long so he tied the bag and dropped it on the kitchen floor. "Don't you have work to do?"

"You called me."

"And I'm seriously regretting it," he announced, holding onto the phone with one hand and picking up the bag by its strings. "And, for your information, I'm seeing her tonight."

"What are you doing?"

"We're going..." Ah, hell ,"towatchamovie."

"What was that?"

He gritted his teeth and walked to the front door. "We're going to watch a movie."

"Together."

"No, Daniel, we'll be in separate theaters. Yes, *together*."

"Right."

Then there was silence.

Opening the door, Jack stepped out onto the porch with the bag. "You sure as hell better not be laughing right now, Jackson."

"I'm not laughing. Really." Another suspiciously long pause. "What are you going to watch? Together," he added, all innocence.

Murder was too good for him. "I don't know," Jack said, trying to sound really casual. "Some... thing. There was a guy in it that Carter likes."

"I see."

Dumping the trash out front – and marveling at the way his cordless phone was still working out there – Jack wiped his hand on his jeans and wandered back inside. "You see what? Don't say things in that tone, Daniel."

"I didn't say anything in a tone!"

"Yes, you did."

"I'm just sayin'..."

"Saying what?" Jack demanded, closing the front door just a little too hard. 

"Well, if it was us going out, you'd know the name of the movie."

Shit! "It's just slipped my mind, that's all. It'll come back to me," Jack protested, already going to find the note he'd written to himself for the timings of the movie Carter wanted to see.

"Jack?"

"What?" he said, going to his note board and scanning all the little memos he'd left himself.

"Why are you defending yourself?"

"What?"

"You're perfectly free to date Sam. You're not her CO any more. I don't care. Teal'c doesn't care. Jonas doesn't care. General Hammond would probably be thrilled."

Jack paused. "I guess..." He ran his thumb over the corner of the note board. "I guess I'm just used to it, that's all," he said quietly.

"You'll have to get un-used to it."

Slowly, Jack smiled. "Trust me, Daniel, I'm getting un-used to it pretty damn fast."

*

Why was it doing this to her?

Pouting – and checking, while she did so, that no one was around to see her do it - she kicked the table leg. Damn machine. 

Maybe it wasn't a machine.

Maybe... it was decorative.

Maybe...

She glanced at her watch. Half past five.

Maybe she wouldn't work this out by the time the Area 51 geeks got here and snatched it out of her hands.

Crap.

She put down the latest load of computer print outs of the tests she'd run so far and tapped her fingers on the table. Ooh, that reminded her. 

Going quickly over to her laptop, she pulled open her To Do list and swiftly typed 'do nails' onto the list. Scanning up the page, she smiled faintly at the things she had to do before that night. Wash hair - use special coconut conditioner, polish nice boots, shave legs, iron shirt, iron slacks, find matching underwear, do nails.

Hmm. Maybe slacks were too much. Jeans would probably be better. Plus, was it really necessary to shave her legs? After all, it wasn't like they were seriously dating and there wasn't any chance at all that he would...

Hmm.

She put her hands on her hips and stared at the screen.

"Sam?"

She turned around and smiled, grateful for the distraction. "Hi, Daniel, how are you?"

He let go of the door jamb and wandered into her lab, looking at the device (Decoration? Ornament? Paperweight?) on her desk. "You figured it out yet?"

"No." She nearly very nearly, pouted but decided not to since he would inevitably laugh at her. Which was fair considering she would do exactly the same to him. It was her CO privilege now. She'd learned from the best, after all.

"I was just speaking to Jack," Daniel said conversationally, leaning against the table and picking up a screwdriver to examine it. 

"Oh really? How is the Colonel?" she said in a bright, disassociated voice.

Daniel looked at her shrewdly. "He's forgotten the name of the movie you're going to see tonight."

Sam scowled. Damn. She'd thought she'd be able to keep this one quiet for a little while longer. "We're just seeing it as friends."

"Oh, Jack made that perfectly clear."

"He did." Wait. "He did?"

Apparently, this was too much for Daniel, who laughed. "Damn, I thought I could keep that up for much longer. God, that was way too easy. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"That you and Jack are... you know."

"We're not!" she exclaimed, hotly.

"I don't mean *you know*. I mean..." Tiredly, Daniel put down the screwdriver and scratched his forehead. "Sometimes, I think Jack rubbed off on you way too much, Sam."

"I wish," she muttered.

Oh God, did she say that aloud? She was *definitely* shaving her legs this afternoon.

Daniel made a face. "Too much information there, Sam."

She winced. "Sorry."

"What movie are you going to see?"

"Um... I have no idea, actually. Some movie with that girl the.. he... *Jack*," that was still surprisingly difficult to say, "likes."

"But you don't know the name."

She glanced at him. He looked unaccountably amused by that. "No, sorry, it's slipped my mind."

Daniel nodded. He grinned. He patted her on the back. "You can be just... so adorable sometimes."

Sam's eyes widened. "Daniel, are you all right?"

"Yeah, yeah, fine. Peachy." He turned around and walked off, murmuring to himself, "Man, I've really got to get laid."

Giving him an odd look, Sam leaned on the table. The screwdriver, which had been balancing on a messy stack of papers wobbled. It rolled off the papers and bounced onto the table a couple of times, sending out vibrations that she could feel under her hands.

The paperweight emitted a mechanical sounding 'whirr' and her head jerked towards it, her eyes narrowed. 

Hmm.

  



	3. Not Bad At All

Title: Not Bad At All  
Author: Jojo  
E-mail: randomleaves@yahoo.co.uk  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: Ah. The movie date. Classic.  
Disclaimer: Ain't mine. Alas.   
A/N: Sequel to 'Un-used' which was a sequel to 'A Matter of Tact' 

*

*

*

In the end, she was glad she'd shaved her legs. Not for him, though. Nice, smooth legs made her feel sexier, even under her jeans. She'd opted out on the slacks after all, decided they were too 'dressy' for the movie theater where they'd essentially be in the dark for the majority of the evening. They'd made no plans to go out to dinner afterwards.

Dinner, clearly, was a step too far.

Sitting in the seat next to him, leaning just a little towards him, Sam's eyes fixed on the screen though she wasn't paying any attention to it whatsoever. If anyone had asked, she wouldn't even know what the movie was about, who the characters were, hell, who the *actors* were - even though she was pretty sure it had that girl in it that the... that he liked.

Dammit.

JackJackJackJackJackJackJackJack.

Why couldn't she say it?

"Did you say something?"

She turned towards him. You know, he was pretty close right now. As in... a couple of centimeters away from her face.

Wow. 

"Sorry?" she whispered.

"Did you say something?"

So... close. "Nuh-uh," she whispered again, her eyes on his mouth.

Wow.

"Um. Okay."

Hey! Where was he going! That was the perfect opportunity for a.... Dammit. Looked like he was actually, you know, *watching* the movie instead of staring at the screen and thinking about whether or not they were dating.

She was pretty sure they were dating. They hadn't actually come out and said it yet, of course, but they'd been to each other's houses, watched movies at home, got take-out a couple of times. And tonight they'd gone to the movies together, even though they'd met up at the movie theater and split the cost of the tickets equally.

Shit. Maybe they...

No, they were. They definitely were. She wasn't completely stupid, after all. They had enough chemistry to blow up the SGC, for God's sake and she knew – she was *positive* - that he cared about her. 

Plus, he was staying in Colorado for a while longer. Daniel had been under the impression that the Colonel – dammit! *Jack* - would be going straight up north after his retirement. Which hadn't happened. He'd stayed. And someone didn't turn up randomly in a person's house just because they wanted to be friends, did they?

No.

That decided, Sam snuggled down into her seat and watched the movie. Or tried to.

Who the hell was that guy? Okay, that guy she knew. No, wait, this was someone else. Now, this chick was definitely new. Hold on... this wasn't the one he liked was it? If it was, Sam was seriously disappointed in his taste...

"Popcorn?" he whispered in her ear.

Whispered. In. Her. Ear.

Oh. *Wow*. Whole right side of her body? Tingling all over. 

Suffice it to say, Sam thought as she stuffed her mouth with salted popcorn, she was feeling a tad frustrated. He'd been retired for nearly a week now and they'd gotten no further than... no further than they'd ever gotten. 

Actually, they'd practically gone *backwards* as far as physical affection went.

Perhaps it wasn't their fault. Perhaps this was normal. She hadn't, after all, been out on a proper date for years. Hadn't actually been romantically interested in anyone else who was human for years – which was saying something. Well, it was saying that her life was freaking weird but it was also saying that she was thirty-four years old and she had next to no experience dating anyone as an adult. 

Plus, it wasn't as if these were the best conditions to date. She was still working very hard at work – in fact, more so than usual. She'd had to cut back on her lab time to deal with the pressures of leading SG-1, which required far more paperwork than she'd expected, and she was spending a lot of time reading up on old mission reports of the Colonel's just to familiarize herself with his tactics. 

She'd never realized quite how hard he worked before. And he'd pulled it off as if he didn't work at all. She couldn't count the number of times he'd turned up in her lab with 'nothing to do'. 

*How* he could have had nothing to do was beyond her. Where the hell did he find the time?

Mentally, she sighed. She guessed she was going to have to do some serious parceling of her time. Probably needed to draw up some kind of a schedule, maybe a spreadsheet. With colors. She'd known the time in her lab would be cut short – Hammond had pointed that out to her first thing – but that didn't mean she couldn't miss it.

"Carter?"

She jumped again and swallowed the last of her popcorn, refusing, this time, to look at him because that was a distraction all on its own. "Yeah?"

"Who's the guy on the left?"

She focused on the screen and was embarrassed to recall that she still had no idea. Not a clue. And, usually, she could multitask with the best of them. 

Sam toyed with the idea of making something up – obviously he didn't know, or he wouldn't be asking her, but then she figured, why bother? She wanted to at least start this relationship – and it was a relationship, definitely – with some truthfulness. Even if it was about a movie. "I have no idea."

He chuckled and looked at her warmly, a daft grin on his face. "Me either."

They spluttered helplessly.

"Shhhh!" someone hissed behind them.

They both stifled their laughter and slumped in their seats. And, somehow, their hands got tangled up together.

*

The nerves were building. His stomach was a mass of butterflies, all flapping away inside and butting against each other. Plus, his heart seemed to have vacated its normal spot and migrated north, causing his throat to constrict and his heart rate to rocket.

They stopped in front of her car.

You know, when he'd been a teenager and first started dating (earlier than his parents had thought, by the way, because they hadn't taken into account the oak tree outside his window and the feminine wiles of Katherine Reilly and her phenomenal... never mind), he'd figured the whole male/female thing would get easier and the entire 'who makes the first move' issue and the nerves that seemed to be a prerequisite for said issue. 

Hell, he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to do more than kiss her. Frankly, the back seat of his truck was looking pretty good right now. As was the asphalt under his feet, the bench over there by the pay phone, that patch of grass, the side of her car, the trunk of her car, the hood of her car... 

Damn but her car was looking really sexy all of a sudden.

He really had to get his mind out of the gutter.

Thankfully, Carter was looking pretty skittish too. Her eyes kept darting all over the place and he could feel the fluttering of her pulse under his fingers. She seemed to be intently chewing her bottom lip. Carter was doing all the things she did when she was nervous.

Which was faintly reassuring, he supposed.

It took Jack a moment to work out that they'd stopped in front of her car, were still holding hands, and neither of them had said a thing. 

They were just standing there doing nothing.

Jack sighed.

"So this is... pretty awkward," she said, very, very quietly.

"Yeah." He looked down at the ground and then back up at her, grasping what little humor he could find. He smiled at her. "I figure, Daniel and Jonas would be mocking us at this point."

"And Teal'c, too," she put in, smiling back at him. "Only he'd do it silently."

"All the more damning," Jack said, deadpan.

She laughed a little. "Yeah."

The silence crept back again. Carter was, probably unintentionally, doing that whole female looking-through-the-eyelashes thing and he was just standing there, holding her hand.

What? Had they regressed to children, suddenly?

"Look," he said, cutting to the chase, "it's pretty simple. We both want to... " Jack leaned his head forward a little, trying to explain without actually having to say it. 

Seriously, he was too old for this shit.

She nodded though. "Oh *yeah*."

Jack's eyebrows raised. Well, that had sounded pretty heartfelt. And he guessed, from the way she was blushing, Carter hadn't quite meant to sound that desperate. 

Maybe this wasn't so bad.

He tugged her towards him which must have surprised her somewhat because she stumbled and her hands went up to his chest to protect herself. "Ooof!" she exclaimed softly. 

The heels of her boots put her nearly at eye level with him so there was no problem with eye contact. 

Plus, by this stage, they were both grinning pretty stupidly at each other. 

Not so bad at all, in fact.

Carter rolled her eyes. "Oh for God's sake, Jack..."

He was delighted. "Hey!"

"What?"

"You said it!" And he couldn't begin to describe the rush he'd felt when she did.

She grinned. "I was practicing in the movie theater."

"I didn't hear you."

"No. I mean," she looked over his shoulder and shook her head slightly in embarrassment, "in my head."

Jack opened his mouth and closed it a couple of times before he could find a way to express himself properly. "That's... so completely adorable," he said helplessly.

She made a pained face. "*Adorable?*"

"Yeah. I know. Sorry." He tried to restrain the helpless grin but it was pretty resilient. 

"You still call me Carter." She pushed him gently with her hands, a teasing smile on her face.

"Yeah, but that's different," he pointed out, catching hold of her hands with his hand holding them at bay, "I say Carter with affection. At least it's your name."

"So are you always gonna call me Carter?"

"No, I'm pretty sure occasionally... I'll be moved to call you 'Major'."

She shoved him again, a little harder and this time, he pulled her hands around his torso, forcing her to come closer. When he let go of her hands, they stayed around him.

He was so smooth.

Carter snickered. "Bet you think you're really smooth."

Jack rolled his eyes – he should have known she'd tease him for it. "Come on, give me some credit. We're overcoming insurmountable awkwardness here."

She licked her lips. "Jack?"

"Yup?"

"Could you, I don't know, *kiss* me for Christ's sake?" she exclaimed in exasperation.

His eyebrows shot up. He was having way too much fun winding her up. "I can see your leadership qualities just oozing from every pore, Carter."

"Oh, shut *up*." She pulled her hands from his behind his back and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. Giving him a dark look, she pulled him down just that little bit needed for their mouths to be aligned and for her breath to tickle the skin around his mouth. "No more talking," she warned him, turning her head to the side, then tugged him two more millimeters closer for their lips to connect.

As far as public decency went, Jack figured there was a line you had to cross when things got out of hand. Most forms of kissing would be considered okay, particularly when it was dark and they were standing in a vaguely empty parking lot. Then again, there was kissing and then there was *kissing*. The first being more acceptable than the second because the second led to the possibility that things could, at any moment, get out of hand.

Jack was proud that he and Carter entirely skipped Version One Kissing and went straight to Version Two. Which essentially meant that he had her up against the side of her car in about three and a half seconds, had his hands hooked under her thighs and was lifting her up to *just* the position where things could get really interesting.

And things did.

Get interesting.

Just, not in the way he thought.

Carter started buzzing.

They pulled apart, panting.

"Cell phone," she said

Unwilling to move his hips from where they were helping to hold her against the car, he removed his hand from under her shirt (how and when had it got there?) and fished the vibrating creature from her jacket pocket. He glanced at the screen. "SGC," he said, suddenly going cold. He stepped back and she slid to the ground, still breathing heavily. 

She took the cell phone from him, their fingers clasping momentarily around the device before she opened the flap and lifted it to her ear. "Carter."

Trying not to listen, Jack fixed his eyes on the roof of her car as she muttered vague comments into the phone, trying to be discreet. The conversation was short and she hung up after less than two minutes. 

"I'd better go," she murmured.

He nodded, helpless now for an entirely different reason. "Okay. Sure."

Sam stood up straight and adjusted her shirt, the last four buttons of which he had already undone. Her cheeks were flushed, her mouth red and swollen, the lipstick she'd worn staining her around her lips. Almost as if she knew what he was looking at, she put the back of her hand against her mouth but stopped just short of wiping. "I'm sorry, Jack," she said.

He laughed silently and moved forward, moved by her unnecessary apology. Pressing his mouth to her forehead, he brought his hands to the side of her head lightly. "No need. I have a feeling this is going to happen a lot. Drive carefully, Carter."

"Yes, sir," she whispered. Then laughed awkwardly as she realized her slip. "Oh damn, I was doing so well, too."

"We'll work on it," he promised, stepping back from her and burying his hands into his pockets where they would be hidden, where he could control the urge to grab her and pull her to him. "Be safe, okay?"

She nodded fervently and turned around as her hand searched for the keys in her pocket. "You too, Jack. Um, do you want to... meet up again?"

"Second date?"

Her smile was bright and quick. "Yeah. Second date."

"Dinner, this time?"

"Sure." She unlocked the door and opened it. "I'll call you when I... can. Okay?"

"Okay." Jack started backing up. "Bye, Sam."

"Bye, Jack."

Forcing himself to turn, he walked back to his truck.

  



	4. Here and There

Title: Here and There  
Author: Jojo  
Email: randomleaves@yahoo.co.uk  
Rating: PG  
Disclaimer: Not mine, yadda yadda yadda.  
A/N: Sequel to 'Not Bad At All', set one week afterwards. Betaed by the lovely Melly and Emry.  


*

*

*

He didn't hear from her all week. No calls, emails, voicemails. Even back when they were working together, he heard more from her during downtime than he had that week.

It wasn't just Carter, either. He hadn't heard a peep from Daniel, from Teal'c or from Jonas. And Jonas regularly called Jack to update him on his dates with Lieutenant Rush – during which he liked to fervently deny that he and Rebecca were 'serious' (Jonas was fooling himself).

So he assumed they were off-world. And judging from the phone call she'd received at the end of their date, they were off-world in an emergency of some kind. What kind of emergency he didn't know – and he wouldn't find out. He didn't have clearance any more. She could be coming face to face with some Goa'uld right now and he wouldn't know.

His heart clenched each time he thought of it. So he resolved to *not* think about it. 

Jack spent the week vacillating between cleaning obsessively, getting rid of things he didn't need and forcing himself to go out and 'do stuff'. Anything to keep his mind off what his old team was doing off-world. 

Anything to *not* think about her and the various ways she could be dead right now and how he wasn't there to watch over her.

He'd known leaving SG-1 behind would be tough and he'd known that – like the first time he retired – the best way to do it would be to completely cut himself off from the SGC. 

But there was no way he could cut himself off from SG-1. Even if he'd wanted to, he knew Daniel would never leave him alone, plus Jonas and Teal'c simply wouldn't understand. Carter was a different matter, of course, but then he was the one who found himself hanging out in her house within a few hours of quitting. 

Jack's retirement had been well-timed. He'd been seriously considering retirement for nearly a year before he actually did the paperwork and had a chat with Hammond. The successful containment of the replicators had essentially freed the military aspects of the Asgard for other problems in the galaxy. In other words, the Goa'uld were kept under a tight watch leaving Earth somewhat more secure. 

Not that he was foolish enough to imagine the Goa'uld were their only threat – after all, they'd certainly come across enough hostile aliens in their time to remember to approach each new alien world with a degree of skepticism that would rival Agent Scully (had he mentioned he'd watched every episode of Season One, Two and Three in the past week?).

At least, Jack had always been pretty skeptical and he hoped – he really *hoped* - Carter had at least taken that into account now that she was leading SG-1. Not that he had any doubts about her leadership skills, because for the past couple of years they'd all but been leading together in preparation, it was just that she was a little more open minded than him. It wasn't a bad thing, really, but she needed to be careful. 

So, one week after their date and Jack was out in the backyard, a gardening book under his arm as he surveyed one of the many sick looking shrubs that he'd been promising himself he would tackle for a good three years now. He wasn't entirely sure this was the right time of year to attempt this kind of gardening but at this point, he was getting pretty desperate. 

At his feet, he had an array of various garden implements, most of which he'd never used. Sara had the green thumb in the O'Neill household and after Sara... he'd never really had the time or the inclination to dabble in gardening.

Now he had the time. He may not have had the inclination, but he certainly had the time. Plus, his house was so clean you could eat off of the floors and his spare room was actually empty of all the boxes he usually kept stacked up in the corner. For some reason, today, he didn't want to leave the house. There were plenty of things he could do away from home – his truck needed refilling (which was pretty much a given), he needed to replace his putter, he had a mountain of overdue library books plus that selection of astronomy documentaries that he needed to return. 

But he didn't want to leave the house. 

Opening the gardening book, he flicked through to the page he'd marked earlier and re-read the first paragraph, getting a jolt each time he mistakenly read 'Sam' for 'same' or 'Carter' for 'create'.

He closed his eyes.

Right. He could do this.

Just. Don't. Think.

*

Not good.

Just... not good.

She skidded to a halt in front of the DHD, her boots digging into the sloppy mud, and started punching in the dialing sequence with her chilly hands. "Daniel! Get ready!" she yelled, her voice hoarse from the screaming she'd been doing all day and from the mile-long run from the enemy camp to the Stargate.

Daniel had his arm out, his eyes fixed on the wormhole, ready to type in the IDC the moment the wormhole engaged.

Teal'c paused at the base of the Stargate steps, out of reach of the kawoosh, and turned to watch their six. Jonas was over one of his shoulders but he still managed to hold his staff weapon steady and aimed for the trees from which they'd just emerged. 

The same trees that Sam had made a Colonel O'Neill-esque crack about only one week before.

Captain Williams, the only surviving member of SG-4, lowered himself down onto the bottom step of the Stargate and pressed his face into his shaking hands. Sam had a feeling he'd run out of tears. 

Something wet dripped onto her lower lip as the wormhole engaged and the bright blue puddle splashed towards them. Licking it automatically, she winced at the metallic taste and lifted a hand to her forehead. It came away stained with blood. 

Crap.

Suddenly, as if it had been waiting for her to realize she'd been wounded, a stinging pain made itself known on her forehead. 

"Let's get the hell out of here," she said, gesturing for Teal'c and Daniel to go first while she swung around, her P-90 ready. Gripping Williams by the back of what remained of his black T-shirt, she yanked him up and pushed him towards the wormhole just as staff weapon blasts began to hit the ground all around them. 

Mercilessly, she shoved Williams through and then dived through the wormhole herself.

It always shocked her. Not the ride itself, of course, because there really wasn't much to remember, but the way she could leave one planet where the world seemed to be falling apart and arrive in the SGC absolutely safe where everyone was familiar... well, it always shocked her. 

"Close the iris!" she shouted up to control, dragging Williams down the ramp.

The medics were already in the room, one set helping Jonas onto a stretcher and several more coming up the ramps to take Williams from her. She automatically flinched away from the probing hands of the medic who was trying to get a look at the gash on her forehead (a gash she didn't recall getting) but tried to remember they were just trying to be helpful.

"Welcome back, SG-1," Hammond said from the control room. "Infirmary and then de-briefing in an hour."

Too overwhelmed and tired to make any kind of eye contact with him, Sam simply nodded and handed over her weapons before trailing after the rest of her team.

In the infirmary, she took the opportunity to lean on Teal'c slightly and he put his hand on the small of her back, gently pushing her over to a spare bed. "You did fine, MajorCarter," he murmured.

She looked up at him, unsure of herself, but decided not to say any more when they were in public. "Thanks, Teal'c," she replied quietly, glancing over at where Janet was rapidly checking Jonas over, while Daniel watched in concern.

At least he was conscious now, she saw, watching as Jonas said something and then covered his eyes with his hand. She glanced behind at Williams who was now throwing up. Wincing, she looked away. God knew what she'd be like if she'd watched her whole team be slaughtered in front of her. Maybe she'd be a mess like that too. Maybe she'd just clam up completely.

She hoped she never found out.

"Major Carter, I need to look at your forehead."

She eyed the nurse suspiciously but nodded.

"Do you have any more wounds that you know of?"

She sighed. "I didn't even know I had this one."

"So you don't know what caused it?" The nurse pulled up a tray of equipment and opened a sealed packet of disinfectant wipes. "It's not very deep."

"Good." Leaning a little to the right – which got her a hiss of complaint from the nurse – Sam peered at Jonas again. "Teal'c, can you go find out what's wrong with Jonas?"

"I shall." 

Sam winced at the sting of disinfectant and gritted her teeth. She was *not* looking forward to the de-briefing.

*

"Sam..."

Crap. He was using her first name – that couldn't be good news. A myriad of different thoughts popped into her head: he was going to fire her; he was going to replace her; he was going to demote her. 

She knew she should have got out of the briefing room first. "Yes, sir?" she said, in as bright a voice as possible.

"How's the head?" the General asked gently, giving her one of his paternal looks that made her very uncomfortable. Though she had no recollection of the General from her childhood, she had a feeling the same wasn't true for him. And the idea that at some stage he had seen her in diapers wasn't one she particularly relished. 

She reached up automatically and brushed her fingers against the bandage. "It's a fairly superficial wound."

"Are you being driven home?"

Sam nodded and looked down at the table, trying to hide her expression. "As a precaution."

"A wise one, I'm sure. You can't be too careful. I was going to say... you did well this week, Major. You should have no qualms about your skills as a leader."

She nearly, very nearly, snorted. "We lost all but one member of SG-4, sir." And in such a way she had no doubt when she closed her eyes tonight she would see their bodies.

Hammond raised his eyebrows. "From what I understand, Major, that was in no way your fault. SG-1 arrived after the rest of SG-4 were murdered. You did rescue Captain Williams."

"Somehow... it doesn't seem enough," she sighed.

In one of his rare shows of physical support, he rested a hand on her shoulder. "Major, unfortunately, that's just something you'll have to come to terms with. There's only so much we, you, the SGC, can do in these situations." He smiled at her, squeezed her shoulder a little. "But we do our best. It's all we can do."

She nodded, trying to take his words to heart even though the wound was too fresh to be soothed. "Yes, sir."

"Have a good weekend, Major. Take some time off," Hammond suggested, his hand dropping to his side. "Visit people who care for you."

Immediately, Sam thought of the Colonel and their interrupted date. It was the one nice memory that was still fresh in her mind. Shit. She just bet he would be panicking by now. "Did..." She stopped quickly. It really wasn't appropriate to ask if anyone had thought to call her... ex-CO while she was away. 

"I'll do that, sir," she said eventually.

Hammond nodded and smiled. "Good. See you on Monday."

"Yes, sir. Thank you."

"My pleasure, Major."

*

"Well... that's just wrong," he said, to no one in particular. Stepping back, he surveyed the shrub, wincing as he did so. He'd chopped off all the sick bits like the book had said and now it just looked kinda... butchered. As if someone with no gardening talent had taken a pair of shears to it in an attempt to rescue it from death.

Which had been exactly what had happened.

Jack sighed and scratched the back of his head. Oh well. He'd followed the instructions to the letter; it was the best he could do considering he had the opposite of green thumbs. 

What would be the opposite of green thumbs anyway?

Black thumbs? Yellow thumbs?

Hmm.

Okay. He was starting to feel sick again.

Taking a deep breath, he tried to push the feeling aside. Hell, it worked in the field, why couldn't it work at home?

What else could he do? There had to be something. Loose tiles on his roof? No. Painting the guest room? Only if he was desperate. Still, he'd actually have to go out and buy paint for that and he didn't want to leave the house.

He supposed he could take his cell in case anyone needed to contact...

Jack's head jerked around and the book dropped onto the grass. He'd thought he'd heard a noise nearby. Was it a car?

His feet were already moving, his brain running over the possibilities. He lived at the end of what was a very quiet street and he knew for a fact that both sets of neighbors were away, and would be for some time. It couldn't be either of them.

Jack walked around the side, crunching over the gravel to the road just in time to see a silver car turn around and drive off. Momentarily confused, he didn't think to look around until he heard her speak.

"Don't freak out, okay? It's only a superficial cut."

Turning, his heartbeat faster than normal, he watched her walk down his front steps, her arms crossed over her chest protectively. The white bandage on her forehead was glaring in the sunlight. She looked pale and miserable.

But _alive, _he thought.

*Alive*

She walked straight up to him and stood very still for a moment, her eyes boring a hole into his neck. "Say something," she whispered harshly.

He hadn't realized he'd been silent. "I..." There was nothing he could say. Nothing coherent, anyway. His brain didn't seem to be able to cope. "I make a terrible gardener."

Sam snorted and looked up at him. "God, she was right. You don't know what to say, do you?" 

Jack opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. "Who said that?"

Tears dropped out of her eyes and she reached up to wipe them away. "The other me told me while we were working on the power generator."

He swallowed. "Oh. Her. Yeah, about that..."

"Jack... this really isn't the time," she said, sniffing.

"I can see that." He put a hand out – it was only shaking a little bit, he was glad to see – and touched her hair lightly, wondering if she had a headache. "Rough week, huh?"

Nodding, she pressed her face into his shoulder and wrapped her arms about him tightly, holding on as if he was the last buoy in the Atlantic. 

And, Jack, whose experience with a weeping Carter was minimal, just stood there and stroked her hair. And wondered if it was right that he should find comfort in comforting her.

Eventually, when she'd stopped crying and started sniffling instead, he slid his arm about her shoulder. "Come on, I want to show you what I did to my backyard this afternoon."

  



	5. Nearly RST

Title: Nearly RST  
Author: Jojo  
E-mail: randomleaves@yahoo.co.uk  
Disclaimer: Not mine  
Rating: PG-13  
Spoilers: Season 7 big one *g*.  
Summary: Making up for lost opportunities.  
A/N: Thanks to Emry and Mel and all the eggnog people *g*. Sequel to 'Here and There'.   


*

*

*

Dropping down onto the couch by the window, Jack sighed as the pressure was taken off his aching knees. He was officially retired, had been for nearly four weeks. When Sam wasn't around, he basically had all the time in the world to himself.

Why the hell did he still leave the shopping to Christmas Eve?

Well, it was obvious; Jack didn't like shopping. Okay, that wasn't strictly true. He *liked* grocery shopping because that involved food. He liked food. Plus, he was working on trying every single brand of ice-cream there was and it was always vaguely exciting finding the next flavor to buy.

Clothes shopping and present shopping were entirely different. He didn't like clothes shopping. Too many people. Too many choices. Way too many colors, as well, and he never knew what colors suited him. Also when he finally decided he might need new clothes - usually when he started getting holes in his sleeves or his T-shirts became too faded to read the logos on them - it was inevitably during the sales when the whole world descended on the malls. 

Ugh.

And Christmas shopping? That was like... clothes shopping during the sales except with a holiday season added and... the horror of trying to find presents for the people you lo... liked. Yeah. 

It was done now, anyway. All done. Finito. And he was pretty pleased with his purchases - each one was very definitely suited to the person. 

But, next year, he'd do it all in November.

No, really. He would. Definitely.

Cassie, who was standing by the fireplace prodding her stocking while Janet looked the other way, slanted Jack a look. A look that was freakily reminiscent of her mother's patented 'I know you're doing something bad behind my back and I'll get you for it' look. 

Seriously. *Freakily* reminiscent.

Jack began to feel slightly uncomfortable.

Holding her one, precious glass of champagne - 'No, Cassie, that's all you're getting and be grateful' - she walked over and slid down onto the couch next to him where he'd been perfectly at peace with himself and the world in general.

Which was really apt considering it was Christmas Eve.

"Hi," she said, grinning at him, the sparkling earrings at her ears glittering in the firelight. 

His eyes widened slightly. "What do you want?" he asked, suspiciously.

Cassie rolled her eyes and flicked her hair over her shoulder. "Why does everyone think I always want something?"

It was the flicking of the hair that worried Jack. "I'm not putting in a good word for you with Daniel," Jack said. Bluntly.

She shoved his shoulder. "Jeez, Jack, you used to be fun."

"And you used to be small and helpless."

Her eyes narrowed into tiny slits. "Are you saying I'm big?"

Jack automatically shrank back into the couch recalling, belatedly, that she was technically a woman now and as such prone to... woman like issues. 

Uh oh. Huge, massive, *uh oh*. 

"No! Not at all!" he exclaimed, his tone slightly squeaky. His eyes skittered around the room until he found Sam's back, nicely displayed in an almost backless black... thing. Trying for a little telepathy, he begged her to turn around and see that he was in danger of being smote by Cassandra Fraiser.

Slowly, Cassie's eyes reopened as she judged Jack to be worthy. Or, you know, she realized he was a poor, innocent and helpless man. Probably the latter. "Okay, Mom tells me you're dating Sam."

Oh... shit. "Yes. I am," he said, proud of the way his voice was steady and the fact that he could actually admit to it first hand.

"What I want to know is....."

The way she left that sentence hanging worried him. "Is?" Jack prompted, unwillingly. Cassie had this tendency to be completely blunt around him which, while he was sure he should applaud her for her truthfulness around him, completely freaked him out. She always ended up embarrassing him. On one memorable occasion she'd asked him why he kept staring at Carter's jeans.

God. He was blushing just *thinking* about it. Quickly, he lifted his glass of white wine - he didn't like champagne - to his mouth and took a sip.

He couldn't imagine she was about to come out with the 'are you having sex?' talk because he'd already had that with Daniel, Jonas *and* Teal'c, all of whom had taken great delight in the conversation and probably told each other the pertinent details. Plus, she was eighteen and there was no way an eighteen year old was going to ask him whether he was sleeping with her... sort of other mom. That would be creepy. And she was way more tactful than that.

"Are you having sex?"

Shit!

*

Sam had just poured herself a cup of eggnog from the pitcher in the fridge when Jack made it into the kitchen. She frowned at him - noting the splash on his shirt - and raised the glass to her lips for a sip, letting the creamy taste settle on her tongue before she swallowed. "Had a little accident?" She winced at the aftertaste, suddenly remembering why she didn't like eggnog, and put the glass down.

He glowered at her and went straight for the sink, grabbing a washcloth and running it under the tap. "Cassie," was all he said.

"Oh boy." She turned back to the fridge and quickly started alphabetizing the various items on the right hand shelf while she waited for her blush to calm down. She, too, had been cornered by Cassie who had asked the question that, over the past three days, every single friend had asked her.

_"So... you and Jack?"_

_"What about it?"_

_"Are you... having sex?"_

Talk about humiliating. If it hadn't been bad enough the *first* time someone - Jonas, naturally - had asked, it was certainly far worse when you were being queried mercilessly by a teenager who took great delight in showing up Sam's lack of a sex life.

That is, almost as much delight as her mother. 

"I'll bet Janet put her up to it," Sam said, closing the door and turning around.

Jack - who now had a huge wet splotch down his front from where he'd rubbed at the wine stain - looked up at her. "No way."

She walked closer and took the cloth from his hand, wincing at how wet it was. "Jack, you're just making a mess with this," she pointed out, dropping the cloth back into the sink with a wet 'plop'. Pulling some paper towel off the roll, she dabbed at his shirt with her brow furrowed. "Have you been getting a lot of questions from our friends recently?"

"Uh... *yeah*."

"Questions you wouldn't normally think they'd ask?" she continued, tactfully, keeping her eyes on the stain as she thoroughly dried it.

"Mmm-hmm. Sam?"

"Yup?"

"I think it's as dry as it's gonna get now," he told her, sounding amused.

She glanced up and grinned. The wad of paper towel was thrown onto the counter as she wrapped her arms about his waist. He returned the grin and draped his arms over her shoulders. "Having a good time otherwise?" she asked, changing the tone of their conversation completely and temporarily forgetting about their friends.

"Yup. It's nice. Nicer than last year. Coz, last year? Didn't get to make out in the kitchen with you." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, sending her into a fit of giggles.

Sam hid her face in his shoulder and tried to calm down - she could feel her skin was flushed. "Of course, " she said, turning her head to the side so she could enjoy his aftershave more, "we haven't actually *made out* in the kitchen yet."

Under her cheek, his chest rumbled with laughter. "I know. We should probably... I mean, we should make up for all the times we've been in this kitchen and *not* made out."

She started shuffling him towards the island in the middle of the kitchen, grinning wickedly and looking up into his face. "Oh really?"

"Yeah, really." Jack's hands slid up into her hair and toyed with the ends, his eyes crinkled at the corners. "I like this look you've got going on."

"Are you complimenting my hair style?"

He grinned sheepishly and bumped back against the counter. Carefully, he maneuvered his legs either side of hers and lowered himself down onto a high stool and putting himself a couple of inches below her. "Um... yeah. I am."

Sam tried to stop her grin. She really did. Recently, her cheeks had been aching from how much smiling she was doing. "Thanks, Jack."

"My pleasure, *Sam*," he teased, his head moving forward, eyes dipped to her mouth.

"Hey, I'm getting be... umm." Man, he moved fast! Quick as a flash, he was standing up, sliding his hands down to her waist and gripping her hips, pressing his mouth against hers and walking her backwards until they bumped into another kitchen counter. 

And, oh boy, he was good at this. 

Smiling against his mouth, she parted her lips slightly to deepen the kiss and tilted her head to the side as her blood rushed around her body and the feel of him this close made her heart pound in her ears. 

When the urge to breathe finally became too overwhelming, she pulled away slightly and studied him. There was no way she would ever get bored with that look in his eyes. "Isn't this the part where someone walks in?" she whispered breathlessly, glancing towards the kitchen door.

Jack nodded slightly and, apparently quite capable of ignoring the rest of the world, pressed his mouth lightly against hers once more. His warm fingers ran up and down her bare spine lightly, sending tiny, perfect shivers around her body. "Then you should stop talking and get on with it," he replied, mock-sternly, gently biting her bottom lip. 

She laughed silently. "Yes sir!" She reached up around his head and threaded her fingers through his hair. She could move fast, too, after all. And she did.

"Umm!"

Heh.

  



	6. Thinking About Hockey

Title: Thinking About...Hockey.  
Author: Jojo  
Rating: PG-13 for sexual situations and some swearing  
Email: randomleaves@yahoo.co.uk  
Disclaimer: Not mine.  
Summary: That bagel has his name on it.  
A/N: Sequel to Nearly RST and set a couple of weeks later. Much thanks to Emry and Mel, plus all the people who feedbacked while I was holiday. The, er, holiday was the reason why this hasn't been updated in a week. Sorry.   


*

*

*

Jack's mouth twitched.

Seeing his expression, Sam groaned and turned around, shuffling back down the hallway to her kitchen. "Go on, then," she called back at him testily, "laugh!"

Trying his damnedest *not* to laugh, Jack closed the door behind him, his face splitting into the hugest grin in an effort to expel some of his humor. 

It didn't work.

He snorted.

Loudly.

"I heard that!"

Well, what did she expect? He was used to seeing her pristine, perfect, every hair in place, every button done up and crease ironed. Not all warm and rumpled from just getting out of bed, her hair sticking up like a porcupine and her eyes still half closed. 

Chuckling, Jack shrugged out of his coat and hung it up on her coat rack. He ran a hand through his hair, shaking out the wet drops of water that he had collected on the jog from his truck up to her front door. Damn, what a miserable day: overcast, with nearly steady downpour. It was a day to hide out at home and not go anywhere.

Which was kinda his plan.

He wandered into the kitchen and leaned on the island, watching her pad around in her pajamas making her breakfast. "Didn't realize you slept in so late."

"I don't," she said, before stuffing a piece of bagel into her mouth and chewing fiercely. She was beginning to look slightly more bright-eyed. "Usually."

"Late night?" he teased knowingly. They'd been on the phone for nearly four hours the previous night and if he thought beyond the general feeling of glee at the fact that he actually had someone to talk to on the phone for four hours, it might have occurred to him just how sappy he was becoming.

Sappy + Jack O'Neill?

Really shouldn't be happening. 

She smirked at him and sipped her orange juice. "Someone wouldn't put down the phone."

Knowing she too was teasing him, but seemingly unable to stop himself, he countered, "I gave you plenty of opportunities to hang up!"

She laughed silently and leaned across the table to kiss him on the mouth. "Morning."

Kissing her back, he smiled, wondering how he had ever got by without kissing her every morning. Particularly when she was all warm and soft from sleep and wearing that cute little blue top. Hello cleavage! "Mornin'."

Sighing, Sam stood back up and stretched (yowza!). "I'm gonna go get changed."

Damn, no more cleavage. At least... not right now. "Not on my account, I hope." He mock-leered at her.

Sam stuck her tongue out at him. "Actually, I'm getting cold. Don't eat my bagel."

The moment she left the kitchen, Jack's eyes zoomed in on the bagel. Sitting on the pretty blue plate. Cream cheese spread thickly on top of it, with little ridges and bumps and a perfect bite mark on one side where Sam had taken a chunk out.

It was calling to him.

"Jack?" she said, sounding very nearby for someone who was supposed to be getting changed.

He could just take a little bite... a tiny, tiny bite. She wouldn't notice. "Ummm?" 

"I'm watching you eying my bagel, Jack O'Neill."

He spun around on the stool and tried to look innocent. Sensing it wasn't working – she was looking amused and superior again – he decided to go for a different tactic. "That was quick." Wait. "Hey, you haven't changed."

"Your observation skills are really something," she said, walking towards him with her arms crossed over that little top, essentially pushing... her... up.

Cleavage. Wow. Really. So... mmm. 

Okay, Jack. Look. Away. From. The. Cleavage.

He fixed his eyes on her face. Not such a hardship, after all. "Did you come back for the bagel?"

"Um... no."

He pulled his legs up and hooked his shoes onto the stool supports, resting his elbows on his thighs. "Can I eat the bagel?"

Not unsurprisingly, she rolled her eyes. "Do you think of anything besides food?"

Cleavage? Wait, no, he'd get The Look for that. Dammit, she was being extra distracting today. He wondered if it was too early to start making out on the couch yet. That way his fingers could explore inside the top.

Oh yeah.

"Sure. Sometimes I think about... hockey." He grinned and he really hoped it was charming and that it completely covered up the fact that he was mentally taking her top off...

He was in so much trouble.

"I'm up here, Jack."

Shit!

He dragged his eyes up to her face, wincing and apologetic. "I'm really, *really* sorry," he said genuinely.

Surprisingly, Sam didn't seem to look pissed at all. In fact... that superior-amused look was back on her face. "It's okay. I wore the little one on purpose."

Okay, the strap on her right shoulder was slipping. It was, in fact, falling from her shoulder. Look at that. Naked shoulder. "The... huh?"

"I have a couple of pajama tops. This one's the smaller one."

Smaller? What? Who? Wait a... "Oh."

Jack's brain was having problems connecting. Did retirement make you slow? he wondered, trying desperately to follow her line of thinking. 

She leaned her head forward a little bit and dropped her hands onto his knees lightly, her fingernails lightly scraping his jeans. "You have no idea what I'm saying, do you?"

He swallowed, with difficulty, his eyes flickering from the cleavage and back to her face. "Oh, I'm beginning... to get a clue." And yes, his voice was squeaky.

Sam hovered in front of him, her eyes lowered. "I know we wanted to take this slow."

"Uh... we did?" He swallowed again. Gee, that lump in his throat was really quite something. "Did we discuss this?"

"Noooo. I figured... I mean, I assumed we'd date for a while first. Particularly considering... how awkward those first dates were. We needed to get to know each other better."

That had been true. Awkward. Very little cleavage in the first dates. "Yeah. We were taking it slow." Man, she had bea-u-ti-ful breasts. And they were right *there*.

"So, I was thinking..." Sam glanced up at him, smiling slightly.

"Uh?"

"We could... speed things up just a bit."

Dragging his eyes up again – dammit, he *was* a pig. "You want to..." He left the sentence hanging. Mostly because he figured if he said the words aloud, this morning – hello! Still morning! – fantasy of his would dissolve. 

And all he'd have left would be the bagel.

"Are you amenable?"

"Are you *kidding*?"

*

This was faintly surreal, she thought giddily, pulling him by his hand into her bedroom and kicking the door closed behind her. Only half an hour before he'd arrived, she'd been lying face down in bed, having a very active dream involving him, no clothes and, strangely, several slices of cheese but then cheese always ended up in her dream somehow.

Once, she'd had a dream about David Hassel – 

What the hell was she doing? David Hasselhoff? Cheese?

Hello? *Jack*. Soon-to-be-naked-Jack!

Focus, girl!

She pushed him back onto the bed, much to his apparent surprise because he propped himself up on his elbows and raised his eyebrows at her. 

She lowered herself down to the floor, which gave her a somewhat... interesting view. "Gonna get your boots for you," she said in explanation, laughing.

"Oh, right." His eyebrows waggled. "And there I was thinking you were going to have your way with me."

"Give me two minutes," she said, holding up two fingers confidently.

He flopped back onto the bed, arms spread either side of him and sighed. "Oh, today is gonna be a good day."

She pulled at his laces – wishing that they had never been invented and everyone instead used Velcro. Laces were hellishly hard to deal with when your hands were shaking. Velcro would be far quicker.

Finally! 

She tossed one boot over her shoulder, then threw the other down under the bed. She pulled his socks off at the same time, then clambered up onto the bed, crawling over him so she could look down into his face.

Jack was looking pretty happy, his eyes alight with amusement. "Hi," he said, his hands tugging at her top, sliding his long fingers across her skin lightly.

Fairly endeared by his need to greet her, she smiled back at him, her hands going to touch the sides of his head. She stroked his hair, following the downward trend to rest her fingertips under his ears. "Hi." She lowered her head and kissed him lightly, taking this moment of tenderness while she could and enjoying the way each beat of her heart seemed thicker, more resonant with each passing moment. 

They drew back and Sam kept her forehead against his, studying his eyes close up. "Did you have serious plans for us today?"

"Uh... strangely," he kissed her again, tongue tasting her carefully, his fingers moving up and down her sides more firmly and insistently, his thumbs always halting just short of their goal, "no. Not plans as serious as this."

"Good. Didn't want to disrupt," Oh God, he tasted *wonderful*, "anything."

"Hey, I like disruptions. I give you full permission to," he sucked in a breath as she lowered her hips down and moved them suggestively against him, "to, um, disrupt me with this any time." The fingers toyed with the edge of the top while one hand continued to slide up and down her side. "Can I take this off now?"

"That was the general idea."

"Just checkin'." Sitting up, he pulled the top up over her head with her help and flung it haphazardly across the room where it crashed into the numerous perfume bottles she kept on her vanity table.

They both looked across the room. Then back at each other.

"Sorry," he said, not sounding remotely sorry.

"It's okay."

Jack slid his hands up to just short of her breasts, his eyes suddenly going completely serious. Slowly – too *damn* slowly – his fingers crept over her breasts, warm hands eventually cupping them. A particular smile she'd seen on his face on only a couple of occasions before twisted his mouth, a smile that was innately predatory and somehow the sexiest thing she had ever seen.

He then lifted his head and held eye contact with her for a long moment. In his eyes was everything that was in his smile. She couldn't have spoken if she wanted to.

Jack kissed her and this time the tenderness was replaced by something infinitely more primitive. Kissed her again. Kissed her harder and fiercer and twisted her down onto her back underneath him.

Oh.

Boy.

Wordlessly, she started to pull his sweater up, dragging it over his head and noticing strange, tiny details with sudden and absolute clarity, feeling like she needed to memorize these moments – the way his hair was swept up by the movement of the sweater, the expression on his face, the scar through his eyebrow and lines around his eyes.

His hand was sliding under her pajama pants and, going against instinct, she grabbed his hand and shook her head. "Not yet," she whispered, pushing him and coaxing him to roll over onto his back again. 

He was confused, that much was clear, but willing to do as she bid – in this case, simply lying there while she touched his chest, running her fingers over the hard and the soft planes of him. Not perfect, her Jack, she thought with a half smile, but perfect for her. She chuckled lightly when her hand coasted over his abdomen and he sucked in his stomach. "You don't have to do that," she said softly, sitting back on his thighs and carefully undoing the button of his jeans. 

"I'm not eighteen any more, " he said, frowning, his brows lowered.

"And I, for one, am glad." Wickedly, she scraped a thumbnail down the fly of his jeans and his hips jerked against her hand.

Yeah.

Today was gonna be a good day.

  



	7. Defenses

Title: Defenses   
Author: Jojo  
Email: randomleaves@yahoo.co.uk  
Disclaimer: Not mine. Nope  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: Observation skills  
A/N: Set a couple of months after 'Thinking About... Hockey'. Thanks to Melly and Emry.  


*

*

*

She sure was tossing those back, Jack thought, watching as she finished off her third glass of wine and reached for the bottle again. Unconsciously, he looked over to his own half-empty glass, his first of the night. It was looking decidedly lonely where he'd put it on the window sill, away from the mess of cooking.

Of course, he was doing all the cooking, he reasoned, turning back to the strips of chicken that was stir frying and giving them a little stir with the wooden spoon. If it had been her cooking (unlikely though that was), he'd have more time to drink. And anyway, it was their special dinner – the one they'd arranged to have when she got back from the three day mission to ... wherever she'd gone. She had a right to wind down however she felt necessary.

Jack settled on being amused.

Despite knowing her for over seven years, he'd never actually seen her get drunk, or even slightly tipsy. Whatever the situation they'd been in – off world or on – she'd always acted in an entirely professional manner. Sometimes too professional, he mused, recalling a couple of social occasions when she could easily have let down her guard a little.

Still, that in itself wasn't entirely unsurprisingly, judging from how chatty she was getting – more so than usual. Sam was probably a talkative drunk. And, considering the state of their relationship before he'd retired, she'd presumably figured staying sober around him would be for the best. 

Deciding the meat was cooked enough, Jack reached for the chopped vegetables and scraped them into the pan, careful to avoid dropping some on the floor as he was usually prone to do. 

Sam chattered away, following him as he took the chopping board to the dishwasher and then back over to the cooker. Turning to look at her, he noted the glittering eyes and flushed cheeks. She was still spouting four-syllable words, though.

Pretty impressive.

Strangely, she wasn't smiling a lot, which seemed to go against what he knew of her. Then again, she was discussing the ozone layer – with some passion, by the way – and that wasn't a particularly cheerful topic. He'd never known she was quite so environmentally friendly.

Still, there was something... off about her.

He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but if there was anything Jack knew a great deal about from intensive (and, often, secretive) study, it was Sam Carter.

She finished off her glass once more, her fingers clasping the glass stem tightly, and reached for the bottle again.

Frowning, Jack picked up his own glass of wine and sipped thoughtfully.

They ate dinner, knees bumping under the table. Jack began to grow a little concerned. The way she was acting wasn't normal, despite the fact that she appeared to be intentionally getting drunk. Her conversation was skittish, as if she was picking topics from out of the air, and he noticed she didn't once mention Jonas or one of the others. Usually, she had some kind of story to tell him – carefully censored, of course, which was a matter that was beginning to bug the hell out of him, but that was beside the point.

Tonight, there were no stories. No anecdotes. No rants on the misbehavior of her teammates, of the pranks Jonas had pulled thanks to the help of some internet site. 

Sam held her drink well, he admitted to himself, watching her after dinner as she helped clear up. Very steady on her feet, seemed to know what she was doing. Certainly, the glasses and plates weren't slipping through her fingers as she put them in the dishwasher and ran a wet cloth over the counters.

After washing her hands, she picked up what was left of the chocolate torte and swiped a finger through the gooey chocolate layer. Standing just a foot in front of her, he watched with rapt attention as she slowly sucked the finger into her mouth, looking at him through her lowered eyelashes.

The meaning was clear.

His thoughts and worries pushed aside temporarily, Jack turned off the lights and let her take him to bed.

Which was where he realized what had been off with her all night.

Desperation.

For once, unusually alert after having sex, Jack watched her sleep. He wasn't actually the kind of guy who watched a woman sleep. He'd never done it before – certainly not while she was his subordinate. There had been no lingering looks over the campfire, no studying the top of her head sticking up above the sleeping bag. 

Tonight, he watched her for a reason, noting the lines of exhaustion around her mouth, the slightly grey color under her eyes. While part of him would like to put her exhaustion down to his clearly fantastic stamina and aptitude in bed, it was obviously due to the wine she'd consumed and her tiring week.

She always had tiring weeks. In fact, Jack couldn't remember a day or a week that hadn't been a tiring one for her. He'd begun to read the signs – in her body language and even in the way she talked. Bizarrely, the more tired she got, the longer her words became. 

Occasionally, he got the feeling she was actually making up the words, but who was he to contradict the astrophysicist?

For the life of him, he couldn't remember if he'd noticed the same things when they'd been working together, though. God knew they'd had tiring weeks back then. It wasn't anything new. Hell, they'd had tiring years but there had always been something to pick them up.

For Jack, it was them. SG-1. His family, in a way. The closest group of friends he'd ever had. People he saw, now, on a very irregular basis.

Okay, now he was starting to get depressed. He'd really been trying hard not to think about it at all.

He wondered if he was overanalyzing the situation. After all, he was retired. He could, officially, do nothing for the rest of his life now. Not that he had any intention of doing nothing, of course, because he would probably go out of his mind with boredom. He was feeling... if not relaxed, then definitely laid back. There was very little sense of urgency when he woke up in the morning any more. The first couple of months, yes, he'd woken up with a jolt, thinking he ought to be *doing* something, but that had pretty much worn off now. 

Perhaps he was comparing his own attitude to hers, when really he ought to bear in mind that, professionally, she'd taken on a lot more responsibility that was bound to be stressful. Hell, she had his old job, after all. He of all people should understand.

Tonight, he felt, she'd been too animated, too passionate. In bed, she'd been two steps ahead of him the whole time and he was pretty sure – but not *totally*, his ego insisted pathetically – that she'd faked her orgasm.

Which was... weird.

She was usually much more forthright in bed – if she wasn't getting what she wanted, she'd sure as hell say so. Tonight, she'd been going through the motions, just like she'd been doing through dinner – striking up conversation for the hell of it, drinking for the hell of it, seducing him because it was expected.

Desperately trying to appear normal. Or whatever normal was for them.

Sitting up in bed, Jack swiveled his legs out from underneath the covers and putting his feet on the floor. 

Oh, God, what if she was bored already?

*

Morning brought with it a burst of winter sunshine through the gap in Jack's curtains and the biggest headache Sam Carter had ever had.

Ever.

Not even capable of moaning, she tried to bury herself – very, very slowly – under the covers, pushing her face down into the pillows in an effort to slip back into the oblivious darkness of sleep.

It didn't happen.

After five minutes of working herself up to it, her head rose out from beneath the covers and she carefully turned, blindly, to the clock. One eye cracked open. 

Okay. That didn't make sense.

How could it be 13:33? That was... half past one in the afternoon. Jesus!

She sat up abruptly, realized her mistake, and dashed into the bathroom as the contents of her stomach decided to make an appearance.

By the time she was finished, her head was splitting open, her skin was coldly clammy and her stomach and throat raw. She didn't even want to *think* about the taste in her mouth.

Never.

She was never going to drink again.

The cold tiles of the floor felt really nice against her face, though.

Oooooooh.

Sam Carter didn't do hangovers well. Part of the reason she didn't drink much when the occasion called for it. She could handle drink – could, apparently, handle a *lot* of drink – but the morning after was another thing entirely.

Careful not to jolt her head too much, she rose from the floor and wondered why her skin felt so exposed. It took her a moment to realize that she had nothing on. God. She was so glad no one was here to see her brought this low.

Pulling the lid off of the laundry basket Jack kept just outside his bathroom, she pulled one of his T-shirts out. Perfect. Baggy and the smell didn't offend her delicate stomach. Slipping it over her head was hard enough, though, and she decided that dressing beyond that would be impossible for the time being.

For a while, she stood in the cool bedroom and listened to the quiet beyond her pounding head. It was nice in his bedroom. She'd always thought so. Decorated in gentle, calming greens and large windows that let in a lot of light when the curtains were drawn back, it had always seemed so peaceful to her. 

She needed some Advil.

That, or she could beg Jack to knock her out.

Shit. Jack.

She moaned and made her way back into the bathroom to rifle through the cabinet for some pain medication. She refused to look at herself in the mirror – not just because she was afraid of her appearance, but also because she couldn't look into the face of a failure.

A really *spectacular* failure. 

Finding an unopened box of Advil, she took the required dose, cupping her hand under the tap for water to swallow, then she put the lid down on the toilet seat and sat down.

She was pretty sure she'd pulled it off last night. Dinner had gone okay, even if Jack had been a little less talkative than usual. And he'd sure stared at her a lot, she remembered with some nervousness. There hadn't been many awkward silences that she hadn't been able to fill, which was good, even if she had a vague recollection of talking about why she liked skiing so much. 

Odd – particularly bearing in mind that she didn't. Like skiing, that is. In fact... she hated it. 

The sex had been good, though she hadn't quite got there. That wasn't completely unsurprising, taking into account how much wine she'd drunk, how tense she'd been and how damn hard she'd been concentrating on pretending to be all there. 

Sam doubted he'd noticed though. Like most men, there was a point when he wouldn't notice if an army of Jaffa ran into the room. Her faking it probably wouldn't have registered – particularly not if she'd faked it well. 

So, yeah, fingers crossed he'd seen nothing wrong.

God, she thought, cradling her pounding head. If only she didn't have to drink so much to pull that off. Who would have thought lying to him would be so damn hard?

No, not lying. She wasn't *lying*. She was just putting off talking to him about a couple of things. What he wouldn't know couldn't hurt him, after all.

She really needed to go home.

  



	8. The One With the Cat

Title: The One With The Cat  
Author: Jojo  
Email: randomleaves@yahoo.co.uk  
Rating: PG  
Disclaimer: Not mine.  
Summary: Getting the information.  
A/N: F.R.I.E.N.D.S, anyone? Set three weeks after 'Defenses'.  


*

*

*

"A cat."

"Yeah!"

Jack sat back in his chair with a thump, his concerned expression relaxing into a smile. "You called me out here because your girlfriend wants to get a cat," he stated.

Jonas cleared his throat. "She wants to get a cat with *me*. It'll be *our* cat."

"But it'll stay at her place."

"Uh huh."

Completely unable to talk about this seriously, Jack decided some teasing was needed. "And, what? You'll get it on the weekends?"

"Jack..." he complained, even though he was smiling, "I know it sounds ridiculous but, you know, the most serious relationship I had on Kelowna was with my mother."

Trying to stop being amused – after all, Jonas genuinely thought he was having problems – Jack straightened his face. "Jonas, do you think you're ready for a cat?"

He couldn't believe he'd just said that out loud.

"No! I mean... sure, I spend a lot of time at her place..."

A lot of time? As far as Jack knew, Jonas only returned to base to go to work.

"... but it's not like I *live* there..."

Sure. You keep telling yourself that, buddy.

"I'm not sure if I'm ready for this kind of commitment. We haven't been dating for long."

Jack wondered what kind of calendar Jonas went by, because he was pretty sure it had been more than a year. By Jack's standards, that was a long time.

"Jonas, it's a *cat*. It's not like you're proposing. Not unless cats have some kind of Kelownan significance that I've missed out on," he added, thoughtfully.

"Actually, we didn't have any cats," Jonas admitted, glancing around the near empty bar to see if anyone was nearby enough to overhear. Still being cautious, he continued, "They were wiped out by our ancestors."

Jack leaned forward. "Wiped out? Did you eat them or something?"

"No. From what our historians could work out, cats were feared creatures, so much so that they were culled."

"Weird." And didn't Ancient Egyptians fear cats, too? Hell, that was Daniel's field of expertise, not his. Certainly not any longer. "Um, you don't fear cats, though, do you?"

"No! No. Besides," Jonas elaborated, picking up a handful of nuts and eating them one by one, "Becky wants to get a kitten."

"Right. I suppose," Jack took a deep breath – really, this was the most ridiculous conversation he'd ever had, "I suppose you could tell her... you could say that, where you come from, cats hold a more sinister significance than they do here and that you're not comfortable with the idea."

God, Sam would be in hysterics. Had she been here. Had she been here and been herself, that is.

Jonas nodded, considering the suggestion. "I could," he said, seriously.

"Or you could tell your beautiful, intelligent and frankly *saintly* girlfriend that you're a commitment phobic... foreigner... who can't handle the thought of getting a cat because it implies you have more invested in this relationship than you are ready to." Jack raised his eyebrows sharply. "Jonas, you're being an idiot."

The young man blew out a defeated breath. "Yeah. I know."

"I mean... really."

"Believe me, I've had this from Daniel, from Teal'c, Janet and even from Sam. Hey. What's up with her?"

"With Sam?" Jack picked at his beer label, suddenly needing something to do with his hands. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, for two months I never saw the two of you separate during our downtime and suddenly – well, Sam worked in her lab all last weekend. On Tuesday, she went out with Janet and Cass. You and Teal'c watched that really boring hockey game. Wednesday, Daniel dragged us to some museum thing. And the rest of the week, Sam spent at work. I would have thought you two would have taken off – it's the first downtime we've had since Christmas. Don't you have a cabin you're desperate to take her to?"

Jack considered his fishing gear, permanently stored in the back of his truck.

He peeled half of the beer label off. "We've both been busy. I've seen her." Sort of. If you counted quick, rough fumbles in the dark and the occasional uncomfortable breakfast silence.

"Jack? Something's wrong, isn't it?"

He closed his eyes. "I don't know. I have no idea. She's been acting so strangely." He reached up and rubbed his hands through his hair, and looked into Jonas's earnest, worried face. Trying not to reveal too much – it was called his *private* life for a reason – he chose his words carefully, "I think this – we're – not what she expected."

Jonas frowned slightly. "You know, she's been acting weird at work, too. Quiet."

"Sam?" Sam and quiet didn't exactly go. At least, it hadn't used to.

"Mmm. Plus, she's stopped eating with us. And she spends a lot of time reading old reports in her office."

"Old reports? Why?"

Jonas shrugged. "I don't know. The only time Daniel asked, she got kind of snappish. She's busy. To tell you the truth, I figured she was spending so much time at work during downtime in order to get some lab time in."

"She did mention that she wasn't getting much time there," Jack said softly, mentally trying to put the pieces together. "But if that was it, why didn't she just tell me? I would have understood."

"Maybe she just forgot." He shook his head. "We've had a couple of rough... jobs recently."

"What? What do you mean 'rough jobs'?"

"You know I can't give you the details.."

Jack brushed that aside swiftly. "Fine. Then give me the bare minimum."

Nervously, Jonas paused. "Um... well, Daniel got himself into.. trouble in the first one."

"Nice to see things haven't changed."

Jonas smiled faintly. "True. Sam took it kinda hard. I think she blamed herself."

"I know how that feels."

"Daniel did keep apologizing, though. He felt really guilty. He'd misjudged the situation and Sam was forced to make some unavoidable and unpleasant decisions."

Shit. Sounded like she'd been dropped in the deep end as far as leading went. "What else?"

Shaking his head, Jonas turned his beer around on the table. "We had a hostage situation," he murmured, his voice lowered, "and things kind of... escalated. That was a bad mission. Most people survived but the losses hit all of us hard, Sam the most because she'd been in charge."

Double shit. "Has anyone asked her if she's feeling okay? Janet? You?"

"Have you?" Jonas looked up at him sharply. "You know how defensive she gets."

He was right, but Jack knew this was no time to be avoiding a fight. This was too important for that. He knew how Sam Carter worked. She needed to talk about the things that hurt the most – only this time she wasn't talking.

He was going to make her talk.

*

The second time she woke up at her desk was the last straw as far as Sam was concerned. There was no way she was sleeping there, not when she had a perfectly comfortable bed to go home to. And Jack.

Wincing at that last thought, she nonetheless started switching off all the machines in her lab and stacking up the reams of papers she'd been using for her research. Only then did she think to check her watch.

"Shit." Okay, there was no way Jack was going to be awake. She might as well go to her own place. Besides, it wasn't as if things between her and Jack were exactly comfortable anyway.

Another thing that was all her fault.

Sighing, she pressed her hands to her eyes for a long moment, trying not to get swallowed up again. Burying herself in work had always worked in dulling whatever pain she was feeling, albeit temporary. Only, she always forgot the temporary part.

She switched off the lights and walked out into the corridor. The early hour partially explained the surreal quietness of Sublevel 19 but Sam had noticed in recent months that the General had been relaxing the late night and early morning shifts. The opening of the off-world training facility had put a strain on resources but, hopefully, the new recruits would serve the SGC well.

The drive to her house was swift – no traffic, after all – and as she walked up her drive she noticed that she'd left her living room light on that morning. She'd crept out of Jack's pre-dawn the previous morning and only spent fifteen minutes at her house before she left to go to work. What a waste of electricity. 

Jack, she realized, knew something was up. She'd been waiting for him to ask and in desperation had done everything she could think of to distract him. Sex, mainly. She used that in a way that Jolinar would have been proud. Not terribly romantic sex, but she was too tired to act out anything more impressive than the basics. 

She missed the keyhole twice, her tired eyes swimming. She was about ready to curl up on her front porch when the key finally slid into the lock and turned. "Oh, thank God," she sighed, pushing the door open and all but falling in through her doorway.

Sam kicked her shoes off against the wall and dropped her coat on the floor. Too tired to care, she wandered down the hall to her bedroom door and pushed it carelessly open.

Oh... damn.

"I'm too tired for this," she said, accidentally speaking out loud. 

"Great to see you, too," Jack murmured, watching her as she walked past him and went into her bathroom to brush her teeth. "Had a good day at work, dear?"

"Fine." She squeezed a blob of toothpaste on her brush and jammed it into her mouth, her mind racing. Had he been here all night? All day? Why was he still dressed? Had he been waiting for her? Why?

A shadow fell across the sink and she spat out her mouthful of toothpaste foam. She'd always hated it when Jonas had watched her brush her teeth, and she'd been slightly disappointed to find out that she felt the same about Jack. He'd told her she was anal and deliberately followed her into the bathroom whenever she brushed her teeth.

"You know I hate that," she told him, crossly.

"Tough. Sam, why are you working during downtime?"

Delaying her response because she really, really *needed* this conversation to go slowly so she could carefully construct answers, she swished her mouth out with water and stared down into the sink. "I always work during downtime."

"Not like this. It's half past four in the morning. Are you avoiding me?"

These quick topic changes weren't going to catch her out, she decided firmly. "Don't be ridiculous. I saw you yesterday."

"You snuck out yesterday morning. You may have seen me, but I didn't see you."

"I woke up early, Jack! I didn't want to wake you." Good. She was sounding offended. That was the right tactic.

"I wouldn't have minded," he said softly, causing her heart to flip over. "Sam, something's wrong."

Panicking, she turned to face him and all but pushed past him in her effort to get out of a room that felt like it was shrinking. "Just because we haven't seen each other in a day, you think something's wrong? Couples our age don't spend their whole time together." Like she'd know. 

"So we are a couple?"

She grabbed her pajamas off her pillow and unconsciously bundled them up into her hands. "Yeah, of course we are." She threw the pajamas onto the bed.

"You're sure about that?"

"What do you want from me?" she demanded, sitting down on the edge of the bed and yanking off her socks.

"Honesty. Respect." Jack hesitated minutely before adding, "love."

Sam's breath hitched and her eyes lifted to him. The smile she summoned to deal with this wavered tellingly. "It was a rhetorical question."

He turned away and walked over to the window, looking out onto the front lawn.

Unsnapping her jeans, she let them drop to the floor before she pulled on her pajama pants. Not particularly concerned with neatness, she kicked the jeans into the corner of her room and her hand reached for the top. Not immediately grasping it, she turned and found it dangling in front of her.

"You know I haven't actually *seen* you naked in the past couple of weeks."

Color suffused her face and she reached out to grab her top from him, only to have him whisk it out of the way. "You've seen me naked," she insisted, reaching again for the top just as he pulled it out of her reach again. "What the hell is this? Play time?"

"Take your top off," he ordered. "I saw Jonas this evening."

Wrenching her sweater off and glaring at him belligerently, his second statement didn't immediately register. "Yes *sir*... what... Jonas?"

"And the bra."

"Pervert," she said through gritted teeth, reaching behind to unclip it. Faintly satisfied that his eyes drifted down to her breasts, she smiled nastily at him. "Jonas put you up to this then?"

"No." His eyes came back up. "But he did tell me a few things. And he motivated me to do something I should have done when this whole charade started. Why didn't you tell me you were having a hard time at work?"

Sam snatched her top from Jack and quickly yanked it over her head. "Jonas told you that? Gee, thanks Jonas."

His eyes danced down her torso again, and he smiled slightly. "You've put it on backwards."

Furious, she jumped up and shoved him away from her, walking out of the room and heading for the kitchen.

Jack followed, coming to stand next to her at the sink. "Sam? You've been acting weird for weeks. Sneaking out early in the morning, coming to bed late, faking an interest in sex."

"Hey! That could be your fault!" she exclaimed, knowing even as she said that it was a cheap shot. She grabbed a glass from the cupboard and turned the tap on too hard so the water splashed all over the sink and her top. Which was still on backwards.

For some reason, the backwards top and the water all over the place was the last straw.

Miserably, she stared into the sink as salty tears filled her eyes.

She *hated* this. She hated everything about this. She hated arguing, she hated lying, she hated herself and she hated him. 

Jack didn't say anything and the tension in the room began to ebb, to be replaced, instead, with something far worse. Pity. 

His hand brushed her shoulder and she shied away, hissing, "Don't." He tried again, and she turned around and went to lean on the opposite counter, her back to him.

"Sam, *tell* me."

"You seem to be getting all you need to know from Jonas," she said bitterly, desperately trying to plug her tears with the back of her hand. 

"I'd rather hear it from you."

"You know everything already." She sniffed. Ugh. She hated it when she sniffed. 

"No, I don't. I know some things. Faint outlines. Sam," his arms came around her waist and he drew her close, brushing his chin over her hair, placing his mouth near her ear, "I need you to talk to me now."

*

"I never thought it would be like this," she whispered.

"No," he stated, willing himself to be patient.

"I mean, I've led teams before when you were ill or off." She swallowed and what with their close proximity and the insulation of the comforter over their heads, the sound was much louder than it should have been. "So I thought it would be like that."

Jack rubbed her back in small, circular movements. It was the type of physical comfort he offered when the verbal failed him. It often failed him. He remembered it had been the same gesture he'd used for Sara, when she had her period. The same comfort he'd given Charlie late at night if he was sick. The repetitive motion gave him something to do, made him feel like he was helping in some very small way.

"But, I guess, I always knew you would be back, that I was just a stand in. Daniel or Jonas or Teal'c would obey my orders because of the novelty of them. And in the back of my mind I would be constantly thinking: is this what Colonel O'Neill would have done?"

Nodding slightly, Jack realized that he'd never had that problem. He'd never had to replace anyone he'd known personally. "And now?"

"Now... now I still think that. Every situation I come across, I wonder what you would do. I know I shouldn't but it's automatic. And then I start arguing with myself. It's bad enough making a choice between my mind and my instincts without wondering about you and what you'd do in that kind of a situation."

"Sam –"

"Wait. I want to get it all out," she said softly, her warm breath brushing his cheek. "We've had a couple of bad missions recently. Actually, " she laughed unhappily and broke Jack's heart just a little more, "I don't think we've had a good mission yet. People have died. Innocent people have died because of the decisions I've made. I know I ought to be used to that but I'm not. It weighs on my mind. I guess before I've always been following through with your orders and so the guilt has been eased knowing that I was doing my job. But now I'm the one giving the orders to go or stay, to fight or surrender, to bargain or not. And each time it ends badly and I try to think if there was something I could have done, half afraid that I'll remember some detail that could have saved that woman's life or protected that child."

"I've got to –"

Her clammy hands slid over his mouth. "Let me finish."

Jack bit down on his tongue, though he wanted to shout. He wanted to shout that this was normal, that she was normal, that she didn't need to worry. But he would let her finish because it was clear enough that she had to.

"As for the rest of SG-1, I'm having problems differentiating between being a friend and being their CO. With the possible exception of Teal'c, they look at me as a friend first, always, and the expressions of surprise on their faces when I give strict orders would be funny if it wasn't so honest. Half the time Daniel ignores me, Jonas gives me a huge grin as if the very idea of me ordering him around is amusing. The rest of the time they argue with me. It's just... so frustrating. I give them a direct order and they'll ignore it. Or they'll tell me I'm wrong. And sometimes, sometimes I'm really not. On the few occasions when I know I'm not, Daniel or Jonas will seemingly go out of their way to prove that there's a better way to handle things. And the last time Daniel did it, he nearly got Teal'c killed."

She shifted closer, if possible, to him. "They don't see me as their CO, Jack. Not like you. You were, from the start of each friendship, the leader. You gave the orders and while Daniel may not always have obeyed, at least he respected you for what you were. I'm always going to be their friend first. Hell, I *liked* that. I cultivated a friendship with both of them, but now I don't know what to do. I've tried backing off recently – not eating with them or chatting after the briefings – but they just pass it off as me being in a mood."

Unable to speak – literally as well as figuratively; she still had her hand over his mouth – Jack slid his hands under her top and rubbed his thumbs on either side of her spine. Mentally, he was thinking of ways to kill Daniel. Jonas, too, but Daniel had more background and should know better.

He wondered why he missed them all so much, knowing how much trouble they could be. 

"And then... there's the scientist side of it all. I joined the USAF because it was the best way to get into NASA. It may also have had a little something to do with my father," she admitted quietly, " but essentially it was to get into NASA. Not because I wanted to be a soldier, even though the... the structure and logic of it appealed to me. 

"When I was assigned to the Stargate project, what thrilled me the most was the technology. The wonder. The possibility that there was more technology out there like that. And for over ten years of my life, that's what inspired me. Sure, fighting the war with the Goa'uld was incredibly important, but that was tied up with the discoveries, the scientific laws we were breaking, the impossibilities." 

She sucked in a breath. "Dammit, I miss going through the wormhole to a nice, boring planet and being able to absorb myself in soil samples, knowing that you were watching out for us. That was my job, that was yours. I was the science geek. 

"Now, I'm the boss. I have to keep an eye on everybody at all times. I don't get to wander off to investigate a new power source purely because I want to. When we come back, I go to the de-briefing, I go to the post de-briefing with just me and General Hammond. I type up reports, collate information, risk assessments, go to more meetings with other COs, with the General. If a mission goes badly – and they all have – the work doubles. Loss assessments, re-evaluations, extra de-briefs, mission analyses, write ups. There's no time any more. Dr Carter never gets a look in. The General doesn't turn to me and ask me to work something out – he hands it to one of the other scientists, not me. And I *hate* that. I *hate* this. 

"Jack, I just don't think I'm cut out to do this."

  



	9. One Month

Title: One Month  
Author: Jojo  
Email: randomleaves@yahoo.co.uk  
Disclaimer: Not mine  
Rating: PG  
Summary: Ah, yes, here he is. The one and only....  
A/N: Much love to Holly who practically wrote a huge chunk of this for me. Sequel to 'The One With the Cat', set twenty-eight days after, and ninth in the Matter of Tact series. Also, lots of {{knuffel}} to Emry and Melly, both of whom are poorly and yet still managed to beta it.   
  
It is clear to me I cannot sustain any level of angst for any time at all. Sel, you really don't have to read any more. They're only gonna get happier and happier...  


*

*

*

"That's it?"

"'That's it'? Your daughter was having a crisis of confidence and all you can say is 'that's it'?"

Jacob rolled his eyes. "No, that's not what I meant, Jack. God, I'd forgotten how irritating you are."

Smiling sarcastically, Jack raised his hand in a mock-salute. "How could you have forgotten, Jake?"

Sighing, Jacob turned around and walked down to the end of the pier, leaving Jack standing on the shore. "So, what?" Jake put his hands on his hips and surveyed the lake. "You upped and left the next morning?"

"No! Of course not." He'd left at about midday. Much more civilized.

Half turning, Jake eyed Jack shrewdly in a manner that was eerily like his daughter's. "That's not the impression I got from the others."

"Oh, really? And how would 'the other's' know? Since I'm positive Sam hasn't told anyone that we're not seeing each other for a month."

Jacob snorted and walked a little way back towards him. "Actually, I didn't get to see Sam – but even if I had, I know she would have flat out denied that there was anything wrong..."

Jack threw his hands into the air. "There isn't!"

"Oh, don't you start too...."

"Look, Jake, I promise you, there's nothing wrong. We're just... having a break from each other."

"But you'd only been dating a couple of weeks!"

"If you want to be technical, we've been – notice the tense – dating since I retired."

Jack scowled. "You couldn't have waited a couple of months?"

"Why?"

"Why? Are you being unusually dense? So my daughter didn't get a reputation, Jack!"

"Oh please, nobody in the SGC thought anything of it. They know the truth."

"I think you're overestimating the honorability of the people at the SGC and underestimating the outside influences," Jake said crossly.

Deciding calm would work the best with this Carter, Jack found a level tone, "I'm doing neither of those things." He rubbed the back of his head. It was, after all, a matter Jack had seriously considered, actually. "Sam and I were scrupulously careful, Jake."

Jake's shoulders sagged for a minute and he turned his head to stare across the lake, into the gently swaying evergreens. "Yeah, I know, " he said quietly. "I'm just... I found out about the two of you from another Tok'ra, that's all. And then I got sent on an undercover mission for two months... "

"Ah, Jake, you know you shouldn't really be telling me these things," Jack put in hurriedly.

"Please, that's a dumb-ass rule if I've ever heard one. You know, I thought you were lined up for George's job."

Jack guessed spending quality social time with Sam had clued him in to this Carter conversational habit of switching topics abruptly. "I didn't want it."

"Because of Sam?"

Immediately, Jack wanted to deny it, but he caught himself in time. He wasn't about to lie to Sam's dad. "Partially, yes. But mostly because I couldn't hack the stress. You have to be a diplomat, a single parent to every member of the SGC, and a paperwork masochist to want to run the joint."

Jacob grinned brightly. "You're right – I can't quite picture you in the job."

"Besides," Jack said, shrugging, "I'm pretty sure Davis is being groomed for it."

"Bit young, isn't he?"

Jack shook his head and toed the dirt thoughtfully. "General Hammond isn't going to retire any time soon. Besides, last I'd heard, Davis had transferred to the SGC permanently. I imagine he's sharing the burden with George."

"I guess." Jake rubbed a hand over his chin, eyeing Jack shrewdly. "I hope you know I was really looking forward to torturing you.

Jack inclined his head. "I would expect no less, Jacob."

"I mean, I had some really great punishments lined up for you at the beginning of my two month mission."

"Yeah?" And Jack had to work at sounding normal. Jacob was freaking scary when he was angry. Seriously. Nearly as bad as Sam.

"I was gonna sic Anise on you and the have Sam find you in a compromising position. Maybe I was going to hand her a zat beforehand, as well."

Remembering well Anise's take-no-prisoners method, Jack winced. "Harsh, Jake."

"That one kept me entertained for a good couple of days. Then the idea grew on me."

"Me and Anise?"

"No, you idiot, you and Sam."

Surprised, but pleased – hell, he respected Jake to no end – Jack smiled. "We grew on you?"

"Maybe that's a little too generous," Jake murmured, mouth quirked. "Let's just go with the idea that I don't want to murder you with my bare hands any more." He took a step forward.

Jack stepped back swiftly, and automatically. He wasn't about to get closer to Jake until he was sure he wasn't in any danger. "That's good to hear, sir."

"And then – when I've adjusted to the idea of my daughter and her ex-CO.... dating – I come back to find you've split up."

"We haven't – "

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," he interrupted, "you're still a fifteen hour drive away from her. And, apparently, you don't have a phone either. Just why are you doing this?"

"It's for our own good!" Jack almost chanted – after all, at least a dozen times a day he asked himself the exact same question. "She needed to concentrate on her career and I needed to learn how to live without SG-1 and the SGC."

Jake's eyebrows rose. "So, after a month is up... what?"

"I don't know." Man, when did he start to sound so whiney? "Truth be told, Jake, when I thought up this plan, a month felt like years to me. And it was about as far ahead as I could see." He shifted his feet, uncomfortable about revealing so much to another guy, let alone Sam's father. "Sam and I will have to have a talk about our options."

"Options?" Jake repeated, dryly.

Not entirely sure why he could no longer look Jake in the eye, Jack stared down at the edge of the lake, the water lapping inches from the toes of his sneakers. "Yeah. Options."

"What kind of options?"

"Stuff, Jake! Private stuff!" Jack exclaimed, exasperated by the line of questioning. 

"I'm just making sure that you have honorable intentions, Jack," Jake announced, his voice creaking with barely restrained humor. "Do me a favor and move in together before you get married? I want Sam to see what she'll be living with first."

"*Excuse me*? I'll have you know, *I'm* easy to live with." Jack flung his arms out madly. "It's your crazy night-owl of a daughter who's got the bad living habits," Jack replied hotly. Sensing he was gesturing too much, he shoved his hands into his pockets. "She does this thing with towels that drives me *nuts*. And she doesn't eat! Ever! She has, like, a *grape* for breakfast and laughs when I tell her it's the most important meal of the day. And I think she mainlines coffee at work, too. Plus, for a woman with, like, no hair, she has fifty-two different hair products, all of which materialized in my – "

Jack stopped.

Jacob waved a limp hand at Jack, wheezing, bent over with laughter. "Sorry, sorry. You gotta let me... wait, I'm nearly..." He burst out laughing, harder still and wrapped an arm around his belly. His other hand went to his eyes to wipe away tears. "Jack, I swear, if I wasn't okay with this already, you'd have convinced me by that speech alone."

What? What?!? "You Carter's are certifiable."

"Oh, undeniably. It's part of our charm. That and the fact that we can never be wrong. Are you good at accepting defeat?"

Jack made a displeased noise in his throat – he did not like being laughed at. "Are you done with teasing me yet?"

"Give me five... ten years."

"Good to know you're in for the long haul, Jake." Jack leaned back on his heels and looked up at the sky. In the couple of hours since they'd started talking – five minutes after Jacob had walked off the lane and onto Jack's little patch of nowhere – the sky had gone from a pale, frosty blue to a pink tinged purple with the onset of sunset. Consequently, it had gotten more than a little chilly. "Do you want to... hey, how did you get here anyway?"

Jake's eyes were brimming with laughter. "You're slipping, Jack."

Easily, he shrugged. "I'm allowed to, now."

"By car. Well, that and a very small, shaky plane. I'd forgotten what transportation on this... place... is like." Jake shrugged melodramatically. 

"Hey, at least we have seatbelts," Jack said, nodding his head to the cabin and moving towards it.

Jacob chuckled. "There is that, yes." He glanced at the cabin, his eyes flicking over the building doubtfully. "Is there room for me to stay overnight?"

"Just about. I hope you're not hungry, though. I'm not equipped to feed someone else."

"I had a big meal on the plane." Jacob followed Jack into the cabin. "Has the food gotten better or is it just – holy Hannah, Jack, the walls are made of books."

Hurriedly, Jack explained, "Most of them are my grandfather's. He was really well read."

Turning around and peering intently at all the walls, Jake murmured, "Sam mentioned that you are too."

He blinked. "She talked to you about me? I thought you didn't see her."

"Oh, this wasn't recently." Ambling over to one of the nearest book shelves that lined the walls, Jake tilted his head to the side and read the spines one by one. "That was years ago, before I really knew you. Or, you know, cared about you remotely. Shortly before I took Selmak, I made some off-hand crack about your intelligence – a remark Selmak smugly tells me I was spurred on to make because it seemed my little girl had started to admire someone who wasn't her father – and she raked me down. So much so that I had a look at your file."

Glancing over his shoulder and no doubt seeing that Jack was looking extremely flustered. "A major in English? Seriously, Jack. And you *minored* in Russian? How the hell does no one know that?"

Mortified, Jack cleared his throat and looked elsewhere. "Oh, come on, Jake. Hell, I was disappointed I couldn't major in flight school. All I wanted to do was concentrate on flying and I figured English would be the easiest option. That's all."

Jake was looking at him oddly. Very oddly. "And the Russian?"

God – how was he gonna explain this? "Well, you know..." 

This conversation had been mortifying with Sam, too – she kept insisting that he say something to her in Russian. Something about it being romantic. He'd refused all evening – knowing that the pressure would inevitably make him screw up and then he'd look like an idiot. What was Russian - *rusty* Russian, at that – to a PhD in theoretical astrophysics?

It had all ended well, though. Having ignored and refused her demands all evening, casually, while they'd been clearing up dinner and long after she'd last asked him, he'd asked her to pass him the dish towel in Russian. 

And she'd jumped him right then and there.

"Why Russian?" Jake pressed.

"Um..." Oh, if the Earth could swallow him whole right now. "We, er, covered a lot of Russian literature. I thought it sounded cool. And, besides, all cadets at the Academy take at least two semesters of a modern language. Plus, it was during the Cold War. I thought, hell, Jake, I don't know. Just did, okay?" he finished defensively.

Jake, apparently, was willing to let this slide. Possibly because Jack was overreacting so badly. "And you did your masters in MDOS. Me too, though it wasn't called MDOS back then." Smiling slightly, "Arabic?"

Shit. Okay, so he'd got a little more serious about his studies? That wasn't so bad. It was still... it was nothing impressive. "You know," he muttered mutinously, feeling faintly like he was being cross-examined. "It was in preparation for CENTCOM."

Jake nodded understandingly. "Right. Jack... I'm impressed. I was impressed and I still am. It was the first time I felt vaguely comfortable about you. I mean, you were just the right age and... appearance to make me nervous for Sam."

"Nervous for Sam?" Jack laughed. "Why the hell were you nervous for Sam?"

"Are you kidding? After the long string of unbelievably similar USAF idiots she'd brought home? I thought you'd be next!"

Jack blinked. "Not... not back then, Jake. I mean... I was still... I was separated. Sara... Do you want a beer?" He was already backing towards the kitchen.

Jake waved his hand at him. "I know that *now*. But I'm her father. I worry. Still... that's just me. Sam already knew all that. God knew she all but devoured all reports on you and Jackson, the first Stargate mission before she met you. I guess the Arabic came in useful?"

"Occasionally." Staring into the small fridge, Jack hoped his face would cool down sometime soon. Or he was going to have to pretend that he'd lost the beer in the fridge. Which would be really hard.

Slowly, he picked up two beers and stood up, jolting a little when he saw Jake had moved to stand on the other side of the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room.

He offered Jake a beer.

"Jack?"

He sighed. Please, please, don't let him continue the conversation. "Yeah?"

"Do you love her?"

*

The moment Sam arrived back on Earth, she knew something was up.

The smile that she'd stepped through the Stargate with faded just a little around the edges as she walked down the ramp, an arguing Daniel and Jonas behind her and a placid Teal'c behind them.

Arguing was probably too harsh. *Bickering* would be better. She didn't think either of them had stopped to take a breath since... since... well, for a week.

But they weren't worrying her. The atmosphere in the gate room was.

She wondered what it was that had alerted her. Was it Janet, hovering seemingly uselessly in the corner of the gate room? Or General Hammond standing up in the control room, looking down at the four of them almost nervously, when he had no reason to be in the room at all. 

Sam narrowed her eyes and handed over her weapons, plucking her cap from her head and smacking it lightly against her leg.

Hmm.

"But you can't *do* that!" Daniel exclaimed plaintively.

"Look, Daniel, I really don't see what your problem is," Jonas replied, stomping down the ramp next to him. "So I do things a little differently? Just because I don't flirt with every alien woman..."

"Talk about the pot calling the..."

Rolling her eyes at the repetitive nature of this argument, Sam glanced behind. "Okay, guys, that's enough," she said. "If you want to continue this discussion, do it at lunch."

Both men looked at her sheepishly.

"Sorry, Sam," they chorused. 

"SG-1, welcome back. Infirmary, then de-brief in one hour."

Sam saluted neatly – a protocol she liked to maintain now that she was the only military member of SG-1 – and headed straight for Janet who was now smiling rather forcefully at them. At *her*, Sam realized, with a sinking feeling.

"Doctor," Sam greeted, cautiously.

"Hi!" Janet exclaimed brightly. "How was the mission?"

"Great," Sam murmured, walking side by side with Janet out into the corridor, keeping an eye on the woman's face. If it was something terrible, Sam reasoned, Janet would have told her right away. 

"Good, good. I'm glad." Janet cleared her throat. "You were due back yesterday."

"Yeah." Glancing behind her to check on the boys and to make sure that they'd stopped bickering, Sam continued, "I'm pretty sure Daniel got distracted by some girl, actually. We just needed the extra day. General Hammond okayed it."

"Oh, I'd heard. Um. Your father dropped by yesterday."

Sam brightened. Well, that could only be good news. "Dad? Really?"

"Yup. He was sorry to miss you."

Damn. She hadn't seen Dad in nearly six months. She was beginning to forget what he looked like. "Did he leave any messages?"

"Not that I know of. He, ah, hasn't actually gone back to the Tok'ra base." Janet swung into the infirmary abruptly and started ordering nurses around, then swiftly turning on her heels to order SG-1 to various beds.

"Is he still on base then?" Sam asked as Janet swept the curtain around the bed, desperate to get to the truth.

"No, no, he's not..." Janet pulled the instrument tray towards her and dropped her clipboard onto the end of the bed.

Sam made a face. Janet was not usually this avoidant. "Where is he then?"

"You know, if any of us had *any* idea what he was going to do..."

Seriously alarmed at Janet's tone, Sam's eyes widened. "For God's sake, Janet, tell me!"

"I'm trying to! I just want to make it clear that if any of us had had *any* idea what he was up to, then we would have had nothing to do with him."

"Okay... now where is he?"

"I'm pretty sure, I mean, from what I've overheard... he's gone to Minnesota."

Completely confused, Sam felt her brow furrow. "Minnesota? As in, the state? Why would he..."

Janet stared at Sam, her lips pursed.

"Oh *shit*!"

  



	10. Navigation

Title: Navigation  
Author: Jojo  
Email: randomleaves@yahoo.co.uk  
Disclaimer: Still not mine.  
Rating: PG  
Spoilers: Seven-ish  
A/N: Amusingly, I wrote this listening to wedding bells. They go on for a really long time, don't they? Oh, sorry. There's no wedding in this. Or a proposal. I just thought it was amusing, that's all, and wanted to share.  
Sequel to 'One Month'. Set during that fic, after that fic and... before that fic. Yup. Thanks to Melly and Emry who are still sick and still way better at spotting my myriad of typos than I am.   


*

*

*

"Here?" 

"No. Another four."

Peering out into the darkness in front of her, Sam tried to make out the small right turns. She'd thought roads couldn't get any smaller than the one she was on right now, but apparently that wasn't true.

The car hit another pothole and Sam winced when she heard Teal'c's head hit the roof of the car. Again. "Sorry, Teal'c."

Pointedly saying nothing, Teal'c continued to look disapprovingly at her. Her decision to rescue Jack from her father was unnecessary – in Teal'c's opinion - because Jack didn't need rescuing. 'O'Neill' was perfectly capable of looking after himself. 

Sam had pointed out that this was her father they were dealing with and henceforth Teal'c had just remained silent and slightly cross. A difficult expression to pull off considering he was wearing a blue and yellow striped woolly hat – a gift from Cassie, who mischievously enjoyed the game of extending Teal'c's ludicrous hat wardrobe.

Spotting another right turn, Sam glanced to Daniel who had a finger on the map and his eyes on the road. "Not this one?"

"No. Another four."

Jonas piped up immediately. "You said that the last time."

Jonas was pissed because he hadn't been allowed to navigate in the front. Plus, Daniel had earlier made some comment that Sam had (thankfully) missed about Jonas's clothes and he was determined to get Daniel back for it.

The two of them were really beginning to get on her nerves.

"That's because the last 'road' wasn't marked," Daniel said, through his teeth.

Sam blinked. "It wasn't..." Oh God.

She resolved not to think about it. So what if they'd be driving around all night because Daniel apparently couldn't navigate on Earth? It would give her plenty of time to imagine ways of punishing her father.

Slamming the heel of her hand against the steering wheel, she swore inaudibly. How *could* he interfere in this way? Jesus, it was so *like* him, marching off to involve himself in her love life, thinking he could sort things out when things *didn't* need sorting out. Things were *fine*!

She could only hope Jack would be able to face her dad and his questions and not fall into the old Jake Carter trap.

The I'm-an-old-man-humor-me-trap. The my-daughter-is-an-idiot-and-you-need-to-let-me-interfere trap. The I-was-a-General-in-the-United-States-Army and you-need-ordering-around trap.

God, the General should have recalled her the *moment* her father returned. The *moment*. 

"What about this one? Is this one on the map?" came an aggrieved voice from the back.

"Oh, give it up, Jonas," Daniel snapped irritably. "I'm sorry about the T-shirt remark, okay?"

The apology – such as it was – would have solved the situation. Jonas wasn't one to hold a grudge unnecessarily long (unlike some people she knew – glancing at Teal'c in the mirror) and he would have accepted Daniel's poor attempt without a qualm. The guy was essentially peace-loving, after all.

But then Daniel went ahead and spoiled it.

Leaning forward in his seat, Jonas snapped, "Did you just call me *cat* boy?"

"Daniel!" Sam exclaimed.

"At least I *have* a girlfriend, Jackson, and don't have to go off world and pilfer the wives of other men!"

Sam braked.

Hard.

Silence descended in the car, but for the angry breathing of one of the backseat drivers and the hum of the still running engine.

Experience had taught Sam that when dealing with these situations, her temper needed a moment or two to cool down or she'd say or do something unforgivable. 

"Daniel, what did Jonas mean by that?" she said softly, flexing her hands where they were correctly holding the wheel at ten and two o'clock. 

Daniel was staring out of the window fixedly, one elbow resting on the ledge just below the window pane. 

"Daniel?"

"I didn't know, okay!" he exclaimed fretfully. "I had no idea..." Miserably, he trailed off and turned his head further away from her, curling up against his side of the car.

Biting her lip, Sam glanced in her rear-view mirror at the faces of the occupants in the backseat. Teal'c nodded to his left slightly and Sam's eyes ran over Jonas's guilt-stricken face.

"Teal'c, you and Jonas get out and stretch your legs," she suggested, reaching to the turn the engine off.

Jonas was already halfway out of the door by the end of the sentence but Teal'c paused long enough to give her a significant but approving look in the rear-view mirror before he joined their hurriedly escaping teammate.

Watching them walk over to the fence at the side of the road, she smiled slightly as she saw Teal'c rest his hand on Jonas's shoulder. She knew she could always count on Teal'c for a great deal of strength in these situations. He'd always been a source of comfort to her, a calming influence when she was stressed or upset and she was appreciating that more and more. 

Glancing at Jonas she knew she'd have to have a talk with him as well. There was something going on with him and Becky that she didn't understand. He was acting so strangely – it couldn't *just* be commitment issues. 

"Who was it? Tamila?" she asked, bluntly.

Daniel shook his head. "No. Laetitia."

Frowning, Sam sorted through the faces of the people they'd come into contact with. She had difficulty with the women – the society had been patriarchal and the majority of the leaders had been men. She, as leader of SG-1, had mostly consorted with them. 

Obviously, this was not the case for Daniel.

"Who was she?"

"As it turned out," Daniel sighed, his fingers now fiddling with the edge of the map, "the wife of the Chief Ancient Historian."

Sam winced. "Lavron's wife? That's... really great, Daniel!"

"I didn't know! We didn't... She didn't tell me. She was in the museum a lot, I thought she was one of the researchers they'd pulled from the university. Sam, she's a third Lavron's age!"

What had that got to do with anything? she wondered, briefly. "Did you..." There was really no delicate way to put this. "How far did you and she go, Daniel?"

"Jonas walked in on us. After that, he pointed out who she was." He glanced at her and then looked away skittishly. "I told her that there was just no way anything could happen."

"Okay, okay. That's good."

"Sam, we got pretty far." He winced. "She was *married*, Sam. Someone else's wife. I had no... no right..."

Reaching across, she clasped his hand. For this moment, she put aside all her military concerns and was his friend. "You didn't know, Daniel."

"But, God," he rubbed his hand over his chest, "I feel... I feel like such a hypocrite. I mean, it's nearly like Sha're and..."

"Stop right here – it is *nothing* like Sha're. Okay? This was human error. You're allowed to make mistakes."

"Yeah, but once upon a time I was..." He made a vague, faintly desperate gesture upwards. "You know. I saw all and... knew things. Things that..."

She squeezed his hand tighter. "You're human now, Daniel. Focus on that." She shook her head and pulled her hand away, not wanting to touch him when she said this. "I'm going to have to tell General Hammond. I'll try to keep as it as off the record as possible but he's going to need to know."

Daniel nodded slightly. " I figured."

"You should have come straight to me. The moment you found out, both of you should have come straight to me. I thought I'd made this clear."

"I didn't think..."

"Well, you should have," she sighed. "What *possessed* you Daniel?"

"What do you mean, 'what possessed me'? She was an intelligent, interesting, attractive woman. We talked about things, about her planet, about mine, her family and my lack thereof. It was..." His voice cracked when she reached back to take his hand. "I just wanted... you have someone, Sam. In fact, in a way, you've had someone for nearly eight years, whether or not you both knew it. I spent three years searching for the woman I loved, never able to... to..." Daniel's teeth clenched and he pulled his hand away from her and turned back to looking out of the window.

"I understand, Daniel. I'm sorry – I shouldn't have said it." She sat back in her seat and looked over to Jonas and Teal'c, both of whom were now staring unabashedly back into the car. She gestured to them to come back and then put her hand to the car keys. "I had no idea you felt this way, Daniel."

"No," he murmured quietly, reaching to turn the radio on as the other two got back into the car.

*

Jacob Carter snored as if he was trying to wake the dead. 

It being half past twelve in the morning, Jack tried to work out the logistics of that particular cliché. Presuming that there were no dead bodies buried under the cabin – Jack was pretty sure his grandfather hadn't been a murderer – and none out in the woods – a fact which Jack found hard to believe – the dead bodies would have to be woken from the nearest cemetery. Which was about twenty-five miles away.

Jack went back to listening to Jake snore.

It was loud, he decided, but not *that* loud. He supposed that had Grandpa O'Neill buried anyone under the cabin, Jake could probably wake them. 

Then again, after a hundred years – give or take a decade or so – the dead bodies would be pretty much...

Yeah.

Now would be a good time to change his thoughts to something else.

Let's see...

Fishing. Water. Fish. Fish. Mermaid. Sam.

Hmm. He should have known. Those fish were always trouble.

Hockey. Hockey games. Hockey teams. Sam wearing his hockey shirt.

Okay. Slightly less obvious but, still, he could see how his brain had leapt there.

Buffy! Yeah. Buffy talking. Buffy fighting. Sam fighting. Naked.

Yeah. That had been too easy.

He smiled.

Though the evening had been pretty weird – conversing with the father of a woman he knew biblically was never going to be easy. In Jack's experience, the relationship only eased up after married to said daughter, but then Sara's father hadn't had a snake inside of him.

Jack froze.

The first time Sara had gone on a date after their divorce, she'd called him a couple of days afterwards. The divorce being as amicable as divorces could be, they'd remained... friends. Of a kind. 

Should he have told Sara about Sam? A courtesy, if you like. Admittedly, it was a bit late for all that, but should he? After all, this was the first serious relationship he'd had since Sara. 

Then again, he'd last seen Sara two years previously. A mutual friend had mentioned her in conversation once, about five months before, and Jack hadn't had much to say in response. Something about Sara going brunette, of all things. It would be just a little uncomfortable to call her only to shove his happiness in her face.

And he was happy, wasn't he?

Weirdly, considering his girlfriend was over a thousand miles and fifteen hours by car away from him... yeah. Despite Jake's misgivings, Jack was genuinely confident in his relationship with Sam. He trusted her, he believed in her and he was pretty sure this break had been a good idea for both of them. He, unlike Sam, had confidence in her leadership abilities; she just needed to get used to the concept. The isolation of command was nothing new but then SG-1 was no ordinary field unit – he was sure she could find a balance between friendship and leadership that would suit everyone. It was a matter of trial and error and wasn't something that came straight away. 

Having Jack around as a reminder of the old SG-1 and as a distraction in another aspect of her life was unfair on her, and on him. He needed to get back into a retirement mode and get used to her being away for long periods of time. 

And he could do that. Because it would be, ultimately, worth it.

Jacob, at least, had seemed to understand. By the end of the evening, he was even admitting that some of it even made sense to Selmak.

At which point, Jack's eyes had started wandering to the back of Jake's neck every time the guy had turned around.

Shortly after that, Jack had directed Jake to the guest room and then took himself off to bed.

Unfortunately, there had been no sleeping for Jack.

He grabbed a pillow and shoved it over his head, but that didn't work. It just made him claustrophobic. He briefly considered smothering Jake, but figured that really wouldn't go down well with Sam. 

Sam.

He missed Sam.

Sighing, he rolled onto his stomach and reached for the thick curtain covering the window. Twitching it aside, he stared out at the moon. Full moon tomorrow, he noted. Plus, the wind had let up; the trees nearest his window were no longer swaying.

Goddammit! The freaking pictures were rattling! How *did* this man work undercover?

Okay, he was wide awake and there was no chance that he was going to get to sleep. Not with that racket going on.

Muttering to himself, Jack got out of bed and crept out to the kitchen where he flicked on the lights. Jacob had finished off most of the small brown loaf Jack had bought, but had kindly left the very end, which was mostly crust. Jack wasn't a particularly fussy eater – unless it was yogurt – so he pulled out some jelly and slathered up the piece of bread. Happily, he chomped his way through it, leaning on the counter and staring out at the reflection of the moon on the lake. 

Maybe he could read a book to pass the time, he thought, looking at the unread pile on the table, on top of which was Sam's parting gift – 'An Illustrated Guide to Fish Specimens'. 

Inside the front cover, she'd written (sweetly), 'So you can see what they look like! Sam xoxoxo'.

Yeah. She was a funny girl.

Wiping his fingers on a towel, he opened the front cover, just to see her writing again. 

A beam of light suddenly caught him on the face and his head jerked towards the front windows. "What the..." Treading swiftly over the floorboards, he yanked open the door and peered across to the car that had pulled right up to the end of the lane. Its headlights were still on. He could, just about, make out a couple of figures, but that was it.

Were they lost?

Not particularly wanting to approach complete strangers in nothing but boxers and a T-shirt, he folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the doorframe. 

The lights went out and then the engine cut. 

The front passenger door opened. "Jack?"

Of all the people... "*Daniel*?" he exclaimed, astonished enough to walk out onto the deck. Two more figures appeared and in the light pouring from the living area windows, he could make out Teal'c and Jonas. "Guys – hi! What brings you here?" And why was he suddenly talking like this was normal?

Wait, they had come out of the passenger seats. That could only mean...

Approaching Jack, Teal'c frowned at him, glancing at his clothes. Jack swore that if he had made some kind of crack about the little green aliens on his boxers, he was going to mock the hell out of that hat.

"MajorCarter drove us," Teal'c replied briefly, in tones that suggested it was all he needed to know to understand. Which was partially true. He walked past Jack brusquely. "I require much sustenance. The journey was most exhausting."

Jack's eyes were now fixed on the fourth figure, who was getting a bag out of the back of the car. "Sure, go right ahead. You know where everything is." Turning back to Daniel and Jonas, he asked calmly, "What the hell is he wearing on his head?"

"It's Cassie's latest find," Sam called, walking towards him with a bag strung over her shoulder. "Like it?"

Jonas glanced at Sam as she came to stand next to him, then he looked back at Jack, "She says it's very fashionable."

Still looking at Sam, he replied, "Well, you know me and fashion." It seemed he was completely unable to convince his smile to reduce its wattage. Stupid happy emotions. 

God, she looked really great.

It would probably be rude to grab Sam and run into his bedroom with her, wouldn't it? Damn manners. 

"Oh, get a room," Daniel muttered, sounding unusually irritated. He walked past Jack as well, and headed straight into the kitchen where Teal'c was rummaging through cupboards.

Jack glanced back at Sam and Jonas, a little confused. As far as he knew... he'd yet to insult anyone. "What's up with him?"

"Don't ask," Jonas sighed tiredly, following Daniel himself. 

Blinking, he focused on Sam – she didn't look angry with him, but it might change at any moment. "What's up with *all* of them?"

"Oh, you know. We've pretty much been arguing since we left Colorado." Dropping the bag onto the ground, she stepped up onto the deck and lowered her head to his shoulder, sagging against him. "I am *so* glad to see you."

Reaching around her, he clasped his hands at the small of her back. "If that's been your company for the past twenty-eight... nine days, I'm not surprised." He paused, suddenly struck by a thought. "Where are they all going to sleep?"

She lifted her head, narrowly missing colliding with his jaw. "Not with us!" she exclaimed.

Oh, he was so glad they were on the same page.

  



	11. Two Dozen and One Greyhounds

Title: Two Dozen and One Greyhounds  
Author: Jojo  
Email: randomleaves@yahoo.co.uk  
Disclaimer: Not mine.  
Rating: PG  
Spoilers: Seven-ish.   
A/N: Thanks to Melly and Emry, They Who Are Long Suffering. And Nanda and Michelle and Clara, for being helpful. And Robert, who I should have thanked in the last one.  
  
Sequel to 'Navigation'. And the last in the Matter of Tact Series. Set... the day after.  
  
*  
  
*  
  
*  


"So... really, what you're saying is that it was just another excuse to come out here two days early."

Rolling her eyes, she hurried to pierce this little ego bubble he had going on. Honestly, he made it sound like she'd missed him desperately. Which was true. But, you know, she had a reputation to uphold. "No! That's not what I'm saying at all! I'm sayin'.... just tell me, when you saw him, you weren't a little afraid for your life?"

Jack sniffed and tried to sound and look nonchalant. "Your dad likes me."

"Selmak likes you," she corrected, a little cross but not knowing why. 

He shuddered automatically. "Just... don't mention the snake."

Her fingers tangled in his hair and her thumb stroked his scalp. "Sorry." Sighing, she closed her eyes again and snuggled further into the pillow, content to doze for a while. The night had been exhausting – first the drive where she seemed to go from one emotional confrontation to another – and then spending most of the following hours in bed with Jack, talking as quietly as possible and... doing other things. 

She was, consequently, a little tired.

Apparently, Jack, fifteen years her senior, had no such problems "We should get up," he declared, perkily.

Opening one eye, she glared at him. "No, we shouldn't." Particularly not when he looked so smug. 

Jack's foot slid up and down her calf and he grinned broadly, his hand toying with the hair above her ear. "The others got up hours ago."

"Well, they had to. Dad stepped on Daniel's head, from the sound of it. The resulting scream was loud enough to wake the dead." 

His face became thoughtful. "You know... I don't think there are dead bodies close enough for Daniel to..." Jack trailed off suddenly, looking a little sheepish. "Uh. Never mind."

She gave him a funny look and then pulled the comforter up to her chin, tucking her arm around him. "Let's just stay here a while."

"Sam, I really can't. It's nearly afternoon."

Oh God, he had this extraordinary obsession with not wasting the day. The guy, literally, liked to wake up at the crack of dawn, which was fine when they were at home and she had to get up that early as well but it was so not gonna happen when she was on vacation.

She kept her eyes closed. "It is not. It's midday."

"Sam...." he whined.

"We could do things other than sleep!" she exclaimed desperately, snuggling up against him and muffling a yawn against his shoulder. "I just.. you know... wouldn't participate much."

"Charming offer though that is," he said dryly, "I think the boys are back."

Tugging the comforter down a little, she lifted her head to listen. Sure enough, she heard a car engine outside.

Damn.

Jack patted her back. "We should get up. Help them unpack."

A pout was called for, she decided. She did impressive pouts. "No."

He ignored the pout. Pointedly. "Sam!"

She groaned. "What? It's my *vacation*."

"We've been in bed for nearly twelve hours! Your father is out there! He's going to get in here and realize we haven't come out!"

"So you are afraid of him!" Sam was pleased. Thrilled, even. After all, her father had hated every single one of her boyfriends starting from Edward Morrissey when she was in the sixth grade right up until Jonas and had consequently terrified all of them. 

Just because Jack was, you know, The One (and she would never, never, ever use that term in front of him. Ever.), didn't mean her father should stop caring.

Besides. It was fun to watch.

Jack rolled onto his back, throwing up his hands. "Yes, yes, okay! The guy freaks me out! He's your father, Sam. He had sex with your mother and you were conceived. The whole thing... really, really creeps me out and the fact that he is right now probably listening to this conversation... makes me want to run very far away. Satisfied?" She snickered. He glared. "Don't you have unfinished business with him anyway?"

Sam narrowed her eyes and poked his shoulder as she remembered. "You're right." She sat up, uncurling from their warm cocoon. "He needs to be punished!"

Because, while he obviously had a right to disapprove and be a general pain in the ass when it came to her boyfriends, if he went out of his way to track down a boyfriend to interfere in one of the many complex situations they got themselves into... that was just wrong.

He needed to know that and he needed to know that now.

"And you can do that... out of the bedroom," Jack said, slowly, encouragingly.

She pulled her bag up onto the rumpled bed and unzipped it, searching through for something comfortable to wear. "Yes!"

"Excellent. Don't suppose you brought..."

Smiling, she yanked out his hockey shirt from where it was resting on the top and waved it in the air before dropping it onto the pillow, where it was later joined with a fresh set of underwear and a pair of jeans.

"What are we going to do today, anyway?" she asked.

"After you've kicked your dad's ass?" 

Well, that was a given. "Yeah."

"Fishing."

Not commenting on that, frankly horrifying, thought, she tugged out a couple of sweaters and then leaned down to pull open the drawers on the bedside table. "Is it going to get any warmer than this?"

"I don't know. If the sun comes out, maybe. Put a sweater around your waist." He crawled up onto his knees and kissed her neck before climbing off the bed and searching for his own clothes.

Sam pulled on her undies, standing up to wiggle in them before turning around to pick up her bra. "Jack?"

"Yuh?" he said, his voice muffled as he spoke through his T-shirt.

She lowered her voice, aware that the others weren't very far away and the cabin walls certainly weren't soundproof, "Could you talk to Jonas today?"

"What?" Jack's head popped out of the top and he ran his fingers through his hair in an attempt to get it to sit right. "I'm sure I'll talk to Jonas at some point today."

Wincing at the normal voice he was using, she glanced towards the door. "Shh! Lower your voice! No, I mean." She slid her hands into the straps of her bra and pulled it up. "Talk to him. About Becky."

"They having problems?"

She rolled her eyes. "Jack, where've you been? They've been having problems for months!" Fixing the straps properly on her shoulders, she grabbed the hockey shirt he liked her wearing so much and slipped it over her head. 

"They're not problems!" He chuckled. "That's just Jonas overreacting."

"I'm beginning to think it's not."

Finally taking her seriously, he turned around, jeans in hand. "Why?"

"It's... it's not really *like* Jonas, is it? I mean... he's such a confident and straight-forward guy. And when did these problems start, anyway? He and Becky were doing so well in the beginning."

"Most relationships are like that, Sam," Jack scoffed, bending down to pull his jeans on, "it's called the 'honeymoon' period."

Raising her eyebrows, Sam stared at him as he pulled the jeans up over his boxers. "Oh, really, Jack? God, thanks for the enlightenment," she said sarcastically. "Give me some credit – why's he doing this?"

"I don't know. He's a young man, Sam. Maybe... maybe he genuinely doesn't want to be tied down."

"Will you talk to him?"

"Why are you making me do this?"

"You're his friend!"

"So are you!"

"But I'm also his CO. And I'm a woman. He needs to talk to somebody neutral, and I mean talk. Not this joking manly thing you guys do," she said, waving a hand at him scornfully. 

Jack made a noise that was very close to a whine. "Do I have to?"

"Jack. Come on."

"Okay, okay. Fine." He sighed. "I'll talk to him. I'll... take him and Teal'c for a hike."

"Thanks. That'll leave me time to talk to dad and will give Daniel some time to go off and be a loner. He likes that."

"He's brought his laptop," Jack added. "That'll keep him entertained for a while. It's not like he's being particularly talkative. What's up with him?"

She checked her hair on the small mirror tacked on the wall –thinking that she was going to have to get them a bigger mirror for up here. She could barely see the whole of her head at one time. "I'll tell you when we fish."

He shrugged, apparently comfortable with that answer. "Okay. You go kick ass, I'll go be 'sensitive'. Boy, have the roles changed."

Grinning, she tossed him a mischievous look. "Yeah. But now you get to have sex."

"I didn't say I *disliked* the change!"

*

Ah. Bonding time with the aliens, Jack thought, watching Teal'c and Jonas admire what Jack liked to call 'the lake next door'. 

Now. How to start the whole... conversation with Jonas. It needed to be subtle. It needed to be sensitive. It needed to be...

Hell. They needed Daniel to have this conversation, but apparently that wasn't going to happen. 

Hmm.

"Becky would like it here," Jonas said, naively stepping right smack into Jack's plan.

Yes!

"How *is* Becky?" Jack asked, jumping off a cluster of boulders and walking to stand next to the boys at the edge of the lake.

Teal'c began to look skittish. In fact... he looked like he wanted to run. Jack knew *exactly* how he felt.

"She's... she's fine." Jonas looked at him oddly – as well he might, Jack thought. He never asked about Becky. In fact... talking about the girlfriend of one of your friends was probably one of the most boring topics Jack could think of. Not that Becky was boring – she was pretty cool. Obviously liked Jonas a lot – bizarre, though that thought was – and she and Sam got on well. 

As a potential kinda sorta sister-in-law-ish, she was great.

It was just... Jack saw her once every couple of months. If that. He knew next to nothing about her. She was a nurse, for God's sake. He equated nurses with needles and the infirmary and the way those infirmary sheets had smelled and all sorts of really *wonderful* occasions he'd spent recuperating or trying not to look like he was checking up on whichever team mate had got screwed on the latest mission.

Frankly, he'd rather talk about hockey.

"Why do you ask?"

Jack glanced over at Teal'c, who was now staring fixedly at the toe of his boot. 

"Teal'c, something wrong?"

Teal'c sighed. "I am hungry again, O'Neill."

"But you just had lunch," Jack pointed out. In fact, he'd had an *obscene* lunch. Jack had never seen a sandwich as tall as Teal'c's had been. In fact, they'd all sat and watched as Teal'c had very carefully buttered pieces of bread and adding fillings and creating the mother of all sandwiches on Jack's grandmother's favorite blue plates.

Jonas snorted. "You should see him on missions, sneaking candy bars out of his pockets when Sam's not looking."

Evilly, Jack smiled. "Thought you were... filling out, Teal'c."

Teal'c's eyebrows raised. "I might say the same about you, O'Neill."

"Hey!" Damn, he knew his jeans were getting tight. 

Smugly, Teal'c inclined his head. His eyes flickered to Jonas knowingly. "I do not think I should be here for this conversation, O'Neill. It is of a personal nature."

Too late! Jack thought. If he was gonna suffer, then Teal'c was too. "No, dammit, you're gonna stay and listen for that comment." 

He sighed. "Fine. I shall sit down."

"Go ahead. Eat something." Glowering at him, Jack turned back to Jonas. "Okay, what's going on with you and Becky?"

"Huh?"

"Have you been fighting?"

Jonas's mouth dropped open. "Colonel!"

"Jack. Well?"

"No. We haven't." Jonas was starting to look a little flushed. "And I don't know what business it is of yours."

Huh? Jack either. But he had his ord... instructions. If he didn't come back with some suitable answers for Sam she'd probably punish him somehow. You know, give him dirty looks all evening. Not 'dirty' dirty, which would be fun, but the other kind. The one where he felt like a heel. 

He reached up and rubbed his hand over the back of his head. "Look, Jonas, something's up. Why the hell have you gotten so jumpy about her recently?"

"I haven't!"

"You have," Jack said firmly.

"Indeed!" Teal'c added, pulling off the wrapper of a granola bar and looking at it happily before diving in.

Jonas kicked at the ground and looked out across the lake. "It's nothing. I'm just being... stupid."

Feeling sympathetic all of a sudden, Jack reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. "When did this start, Jonas? What are you so worried about?"

Jonas made a face. "I don't know. It just... suddenly I realized it was serious, that's all."

"Uh... *yeah*."

The younger man gave Jack a sarcastic look and threw his hands to the side. "So it crept up on me, so what? I didn't realize until a few months ago. And... I'm not sure I want it to be serious."

"No?" Mentally, Jack sighed. This was getting... pretty repetitive. "Any... particular reason?"

Jonas swallowed, glancing at Teal'c and then back at Jack. "My job... the things I do on a day to day basis, it's dangerous. We walk through that Stargate and we come across hostile aliens that try to kill us. And she *loves* me."

Oh God.

Jack began to get that sinking feeling that things were about to get serious.

"I just don't think... I don't think we should make it serious when I could die," his said urgently, his voice lowered. "More than anything, I don't want to hurt her. She does not deserve to be hurt if something happens to me. I just can't do that to her."

Jonas swallowed and looked at the ground, shaking his head. "I have to find a way to tell her that, that's all. I love her so much... I know it's going to hurt like hell when I tell her, tell her we can't see each other any more. But it's the right thing to do." 

Glancing up at Jack, then Teal'c, he raised his eyebrows hopefully. "Isn't it?"

*

Sam was now openly playing Daniel's Gameboy in front of Jack and he had said nothing. She'd even turned the volume up so the irritating, tinny music could further irritate him into talking to her.

Nothin'.

Squat. 

She'd never seen the man so quiet, or so still.

Pressing pause, she rested the Gameboy on her stomach and stared at him as he sat up on the boat, fishing rod in hand, staring fixedly down into the water. He hadn't moved for nearly an hour and a half. If he wasn't blinking and his chest wasn't moving slightly with his breathing, she would have poked him to see if he was actually alive.

The three of them had returned from their hike a couple of hours after lunch. They were gone long enough for Sam to have a very satisfying screaming match with her father and for Jacob to, grudgingly, promise never to interfere again and long enough for her to also have a chat with Selmak while they baked cookies, after which her father had taken himself off for a nap in the guest room.

Apparently, the Tok'ra didn't sleep much on undercover missions. 

They'd made a miserable trio, actually. Teal'c came in first, nodded at her and nabbed three cookies before walking off to sit in front of the TV, then Jonas and Jack walked in, both of whom were so deep in thought that they had mirroring frown lines on their foreheads. Jonas had taken the car to drive into town, obviously needing to be by himself for a bit and Daniel had already taken the laptop to the picnic bench outside to work. 

She'd reminded Jack – foolishly, perhaps – that they were supposed to spend quality fishing time together and he'd nodded vaguely, going about the preparations like he was half asleep.

"Jack?" Sam murmured.

"Mmm?"

"What happened?"

"Nothing."

She'd asked him the same question every ten minutes and he'd had exactly the same answer each time.

She saved her game – Daniel had made her promise that if she defeated the Level Three boss, she would save it for him – and tucked it into her bag before climbing up off the nest of blankets, jackets and clothes with which she'd lined the base of the boat. These boats were not built for comfort.

Sitting on the plank next to him, she touched his knee. "Jack? You want to tell me why you're upset?"

His head jerked a little towards her, but that was it. "Mmm?"

Impatiently, she nudged him with her shoulder. "What's up?"

"Just thinking."

She rolled her eyes and leaned against his side properly. "Come on, tell me. You can't just sit here. I thought we were supposed to spend quality time together. After our extremely long and trying absence from each other." She smiled, hoping to get a response.

Nothing. 

"Jack?" Sam asked, her voice changing to become more serious. "Really, what's wrong?"

Slowly, he laid the fishing rod down in the boat, not bothering to pull in the line, and clasped his hands together, staring down at them. "Well, I talked to Jonas."

"Uh huh."

Jack looked at his thumbs sternly and then lifted his head to look at her, brown eyes darker than usual. "And he told me what the problem was."

"Ye-es?" She tucked her arm through his, suddenly needing the contact. "What is it?"

His eyes roved lovingly over her face, his hand coming up to touch the edge of her left eyebrow lightly. "He's afraid for her. He's afraid... of what dying during some off-world mission will do to her."

Sam felt a chill go down her spine. "Oh."

"That's why he doesn't want to get serious." Leaning forward, Jack pressed his lips against her forehead and then drew back a centimeter to say, "He doesn't want to hurt her."

Holding on tighter to his arm, she stared fixedly at his knee, her heart rising slowly, thickly up into her throat and a burning beginning behind her eyes. "Jack, surely... that's up to Becky to decide. He can't decide for her, can he?"

"No, he can't." Jack sighed. "But.... it's an interesting thought."

"Jack, God... This better not be a breaking-up speech, Jack."

Jack smiled, looking strangely calm. "Well, no, Sam, it's really not. It's just... I suppose, I always figured with us, the frat regs would be the only problem. Or the Goa'uld. It never occurred to me that with those two removed... there would always be the matter of you risking life every couple of weeks. The universe is hardly safe."

He laughed suddenly. Almost silently. A dry, breathy sound that was nothing like the belly laughs she'd got used to after his retirement or the noise that was almost a giggle that he only made late at night when he was really tired. "Or maybe.. maybe it did occur to me. The first mission you went on without me... I couldn't do enough to not think about you. I would read a book... and your name would jump out on each page. I'd turn on the TV and the would be 'Sams' all over the place. For the first time I realized what hell I put Sara through."

"What... " She pulled away from him and climbed over to the other bench so she could look at him properly. "What do you want me to do, Jack?"

Dropping his hands between his legs, he shook his head at her sadly. "Honestly? I want you to give up. I want you to leave. I want you to work in a lab for the rest of your life. But you're not going to do that." Jack reached across and touched her knee lightly. "Sara always used to say... the things I did for my country were part of me. I couldn't give them up, just like I can't give up my sense of humor, the color of my eyes." He shrugged, a bitter smile twisted his mouth. "I don't think there's anything we can do about the way I feel, Sam."

"There's... there's got to be something," she whispered.

"I just... thought I should tell you that I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea and that, when we go back home, we might need to do more of this talking thing."

Faintly numb, she tried to summarize what he'd just told her. "Right. So, you don't... well, you're not fond of the fact that I go through the Stargate into occasionally hostile situations and might possibly die?"

Jack snorted at her plaintive tone. "Yes. That's about it. I'm not saying I won't get used to it, Sam. After all, for the past month I've been up here and when I thought about you, it wasn't whether you were being shot at by some crazy alien with a weapon that fires poisonous darts or something. Mostly you were naked," he admitted, his grin flickering briefly.

She glared at him, unwilling to be amused. "So... you just wanted to tell me this to scare the shit out of me."

"Um, well no..... it was really in the name of... honesty and stuff."

Sam folded her arms across her chest and considered picking up that Tupperware box and throwing all those little pink worms down his clothes. "Honesty. Right."

"Are you sulking?"

"No, no. I'm *fine*. I'd like to go back to the cabin now," Sam said through her teeth.

"You're sulking."

"I'm not sulking. I'm glad you told me this," she said, firmly, trying to sound genuine. "I just wish you'd gone about it a more tactful way, that's all."

"Oh." Jack scratched the back of his head. "Well... Jonas kinda made me worry if I should be thinking like he was. Or how he thought Becky was."

"Becky is thinking no such thing."

"She's not? I mean, when I told Jonas that Becky understood... I was kinda just saying the right thing. I really wanted to get the hell out of the conversation."

"Becky," Sam pointed out, "is a nurse in the SGC. She, probably better than anyone, knows what happens to people who go through the gate into hostile situations. She sees the results, for God's sake. You saw the results! Becky is probably going to give Jonas hell the moment he suggests... Dammit, Jack, I could get hit by a truck!"

Jack blinked at her. "Um, yes, in theory, you could. Not now because we're in the middle of a lake..."

"I could... get struck by lightening. A meteor could fall onto my head." Dangerously, she jumped up in the boat and pointed at him furiously. "And you! Why the hell aren't I worrying about you? Last summer you rollerbladed into a wall! You had a concussion! You had us all telling everyone that someone tried to break into your house!"

"Shhhh!" Jack hissed, turning to check on the others, to make sure no one could hear. "Could you keep it down a bit, Sam?" He grabbed holding of the finger that was waving in front of his face and pulled her down to sit next to him. "Okay, let's calm down now."

"Calm down! I will *not* calm down! You scared the shit out of me! I thought you were going to..." She was breathing quite hard now and if she didn't, you know, start breathing slowly and deeply there was a distinct chance that she might hyperventilate.

"I suck, don't I?"

"Yes!"

*

Jonas came back in good spirits, though Jack didn't quite understand why. From what he could tell, Becky had basically screamed down the phone at him for a good half hour. This, bizarrely, had resulted in Jonas returning in a really cheerful mood.

"Why are you smiling?" Jack demanded, finally, as he and Jonas sat in front of the small TV.

He shrugged. "I'm happy."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Because she shouted at you?"

Not looking entirely comfortable with his explanation, Jonas never the less agreed, "Um... yeah." He took a chance, and grabbed the remote from Jack's hand. "Now, shut up. The Simpsons are on."

Jack shut up. 

What? The Simpsons really were on!

About ten minutes into the program, just before the first break, Sam dropped down onto the couch next to him and tucked her legs under herself. Glancing at her nervously – she'd been acting very strangely since his admission in the boat – he wondered if she was going to hurt him in some way. 

Very carefully, using his right foot, he pushed a particularly heavy book from her end of the coffee table to the other end. 

Sam watched him. When he was done, she looked at him disdainfully, sniffed, and went back to watching the Simpsons. 

A moment later, Jacob came inside. "Getting cold out," he said, dropping onto the other couch. "What's this? A cartoon?"

"It's the Simpsons," Jack and Jonas chorused without looking away from the TV.

"It's a cartoon," Jacob repeated. Bluntly.

"It's a really *good* cartoon," Jonas told him, glancing away to give Jacob a stern look. "It's famous."

Sometimes, Jonas could come in handy, Jack thought vaguely as one by one, Santa's Little Helper's puppies ate Homer's chips.

"Really." Jacob looked amused. "Who's the large yellow guy?"

"Homer Simpson," Sam said.

Jacob chuckled disdainfully. "Sam? *You* watch this?"

"She has the tapes," Jack told him, smugly. "Though she hides them."

"Only so you don't steal them."

Okay, now that was a fabrication. "I wouldn't steal them! I have the DVDs!"

Sam smirked and sort of shifted until their shoulders were touching lightly. 

"Besides," Jonas said, wriggling uncomfortably in his spot as they sniped at each other, "it's not like that matters any more. Sam moved in with you, after all."

Jacob twitched and looked at them all. "I beg your pardon?"

"Oh, didn't I mention that?" Sam murmured, calmly looking at her nails. "Now, shush, Dad. It's the Simpsons."

"Young lady, I will do no..."

"Hey, why didn't anyone tell me the Simpsons were on?" Daniel exclaimed, sounding a little more like his normal self as he walked in from outside and put his laptop down on the table. "Where's Teal'c?"

"Taking a nap in the guest room," Jacob commented, "He sure snores loudly."

Jack shot Jacob a look but knew he couldn't comment. Not if he wanted to see tomorrow. But, damn, it was temping.

"We should wake him," Daniel told everyone, sitting next to Jacob and propping his feet up on the coffee table, "this is his favorite episode."

"No kidding? TEAL'C!" Jack tipped his head back and yelled, causing everyone in room to jump.

"Thank you, Jack," Sam murmured, reaching up to wiggle a finger in her ear.

Not a minute later, an alert ex-Jaffa entered the room. His eyes brightened when he saw the TV screen. "The small animals are most endearing." Jacob and Daniel shuffled up until Teal'c could sit down next to them.

Sam's head sort of... dropped onto Jack's shoulder. And her hand worked her way into his.

She was sneaky like that.

"You know, Daniel," Sam began, her voice sending vibrations down his arm, "I have a friend who majored in Archaeology at the Academy. You'd really like her...."

"Oh no! Nonononono!" Daniel announced, clambering up and walking out of the room into the kitchen. Unfortunately for Daniel, Sam seemed quite keen to follow up this conversation and she slipped off the couch and climbed over the various legs that were in her way. "Sam! Don't do this!"

"Do what? I'm just sayin'... you'd like her. We could have a dinner party when we get back to Colorado."

Jack glanced helplessly at Jonas. Jonas mouthed 'dinner party?' at Jack and raised his eyebrows. Jack shrugged. Damn, that meant he'd have to do all the cooking. Wasn't Becky a vegetarian? Or was that a vegan? Hmm. Some kind of paella, perhaps? He could do two kinds. 

They both went back to watching the Simpsons, Jack mentally reviewing his list of dinner party meals 

"So... you're living together."

Jack mentally sighed. "Well, it was one of the things we decided before we... took our little holiday, Jacob."

"And you didn't feel you should tell me this?"

"You were having so much fun mocking me, Jake," Jack said genially, taking the remote from Jonas and turning up the volume a couple of notches, "I thought I'd... you know... let you carry on."

From the kitchen, Jack could hear Sam was winning the 'conversation' with Daniel. 

Jacob was frowning heavily. "Then there was really no reason for me to come up here."

"There was no reason in the *first* place, Jacob. Sam and I are fine."

"She didn't mention that she'd moved in with you in our conversation this afternoon," Jacob continued, apparently ignoring Jack's statement.

"Why is this annoying you?"

"Because I spent eighty percent of my time off-world, Jack. If she doesn't tell me, I'll never find out. Sam!" Jacob pulled himself out from the couch and went into the kitchen.

Obviously relieved, Teal'c shuffled over onto the couch so he could lie down with his legs hanging over the end. Jonas and Jack both sighed as the room relaxed into a comfortable silence. 

Still, Jack's earlier worry was still concerning him. "Becky's a vegetarian, isn't she?" he asked Jonas.

Jonas shook his head. "No. Why?"

"Oh. Who is it we know who's a vegetarian?"

"I don't know anyone who's a vegetarian."

"A vegan?"

"Nope."

Jack frowned. "Someone has a weird eating thing. Who is it? This is going to..."

Quick as a flash, Teal'c was up, the remote control was removed from Jack's hand and the volume had been nudged up another two notches. He glared at Jack, then at Jonas, then at Jack again, and went to sit down, muttering. 

Jack was pretty sure he heard a derogatory-sounding '*humans*' in the muttering, but he couldn't be sure.

Jonas nudged Jack with his elbow, grinning. Jack grinned back contentedly. "You know, I think we should make this a yearly trip," he announced.

"Would you *be quiet*!"

"Yes, Teal'c."

  



End file.
